T&A in the DA
by Rico Perrien
Summary: In order become more comfortable with each other, the female members of Dumbledore's Army get together for an evening's fun and entertainment.
1. Prologue

** T&A in the DA**

**Rating:** M (for two chapters) **Warning**: Nudity, auto-sexual acts

**Timeframe**: Fall of 1995, with consideration of things from before.

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily (damn it) or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

I have read some other fan fiction concerning the family backgrounds, but I think I have taken a different tack on them; if you find my plotlines a little too familiar, I can assure you that it was not intentional, and that you enjoyed the other stories as well. You may consider this more of a treatise on family histories and not a story – all I can say is wait for it.

I must thank Bobmin for the identification of the wizards' garbage disposal system.

**Summary**: In order become more comfortable with each other, the female members of the DA get together for an evening's fun and entertainment.

**Author's Notes**

This developed from a plot bunny that hopped by. Bunnies tend to reproduce rapidly. Also, as Alice found out, following bunnies can lead you to some rather strange places.

I have long been puzzled by certain features of the Hogwarts curriculum, given my own education and the typical British school structure. I have attempted to address one or two aspects of this.

I have long been fascinated by where and how people end up as they are and where they are. Often a parent's foibles or career choice will affect their children's strengths and weakness in life, sometimes in unpredictable ways. For example, the son of a gambler may be a risk taker themselves, or extremely conservative with money seeing the damage it caused.

As part of full disclosure, I have to point out I am an adult male, so my understanding of the teenage female mind is speculative at best.

I also agree with several other authors that, in my estimation, Ron and Hermione do not belong together as a couple as they have completely incompatible interests. However, at the timeframe of this story, there are only a small number of male characters who will have anything to do with Hermione, and while she is closest to Ron and Harry, Harry's chances of surviving to graduation don't look too good, and Hermione's analytical brain could not have overlooked this fact. However, this digression is completely and totally irrelevant to this story.

One other point is my point-of-view concerning of Luna Lovegood. It is apparent in the canonical stories that wizarding folk can be just as narrow-minded as muggles. Just as muggles deny magic, because they haven't seen true magic, most pure-bloods do not see the implications of their treatment of muggles and elves as inappropriate. If confronted with beliefs or experiences which they have not shared (such as observation of rare creatures, such as the okapi, the mountain gorilla, and other fauna which were believed fantastical), they might well tend to dismiss them and the people (or in this case, a young woman) holding these views.


	2. Concerning Magic: Concerning Parents

** T&A in the DA**

**Prologue**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

I must thank Bobmin for the identification of the wizards' garbage disposal system.

**Prologue Part 1: Concerning Magic**

Magic is, in essence, the wilful (whether conscious or unconscious) manipulation of the forces of nature to accomplish feats unavailable to the non-magical. This allows the witch or wizard to reshape matter, to fly, to cast spells, and to balance chequebooks.

The second law of Thermo-dynamics applies to the wizarding world as much as to muggles, although in somewhat different ways. For example, the magical disposal of garbage into the magma chambers of volcanoes introduces volatiles into these reservoirs of molten rock, increasing the force of eruptions – it has been surmised that the disastrous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD was in part exacerbated by the clean-up of Rome after the great fire, having taken the intervening 15 years for the water (used to quench the fire) to build up pressure beyond what was already there in the lava. After this catastrophe, the powers-that-were (ancient organizations of what are now the Powers-That-Be) refocused the cleaning charms to the magma chambers of Mount Etna and Stromboli which, being is states of constant eruption, release the additional pressure gradually. As the populations of the world increased over time, Mt. Arenal in Costa Rica, and in 1983 Mt Kilauea, was added to provide additional disposal capacity.

In most cases, the local decrease in entropy used by the adept to accomplish their magical task is offset by an increase in the global disorder somewhere else, and usually to such a small degree that muggle scientists dismiss it as margins of error in their measurements – this has lead to adjustments in muggle modelling of the natural processes known as the "Finnagle's constants", "Diddle factors", etc., which adjust the predicted outcomes to match the observed phenomena.

One force not commonly mentioned in books about magical folk, intended for younger muggle readers by blonde authors living in cooler parts of island countries, is the sexual force. This force is a primary factor in the continuation of species and the evolutionary rise of new species through mate selection. Its power can be shown by considering slugs, warthogs and gnus which, spite of being very unattractive, seem to propagate in large numbers.

The strength of this force can be compared to that of other natural forces by considering that the gravitational force between an 80 kg mass (nominally male) and a 60 kg mass (nominally female) separated by an average distance of 10 centimetres (specifying the conditions under which positions of this proximity would occur is left as an exercise for the student), is less than the weight of a postage stamp. Obviously, there are more powerful forces at work.

A school teaching and training young wizards and witches would have to address certain factors used in the manipulation of such a powerful natural force. The most obvious example is, of course, the preparation of love potions. However, the second law comes into effect here as well, and it is a very well known fact that dealings with the sexual forces have highly entropic effects, often leading to complete disorder in the lives of those involved. As much as this force messes up the lives of teenage muggles, with the higher levels of magical power and actual manipulation of the natural forces inherent in magic, the extra degree of chaos in the lives of magical teenagers can only be imagined. This may explain the frantic weekend searches at Hogwarts for nooks and crannies, where students can explore each others' nook and crannies (and perhaps discover for themselves that Tab A does indeed fit into Slot B, in all its infinite variations).

It must be noted that Hogwarts castle appears to have an inordinate number of broom closets.

Another facet of magic and the control of natural forces is the enhancement of sensual experiences. The muggle mind can only dream as to the taste of a fresh strawberry, or the feeling of wind in your hair tickling your shoulders, or warm sun on your skin on the beach, with the senses magically enhanced. The more puritanical (often described as old biddies of both sexes) often confuse the sensual and the sexual, figuring that anything that gives pleasure must be bad.

The nature of the forces, and of the magical manipulation of them, is not inherently good or bad. It is the intent of the person or the use of the forces that can be good or bad. Some uses are unforgivably bad, whereas some are very innocent. Whether children playing "Doctor" is bad may depend on whether, in your viewpoint, it is innocent curiosity about natural differences, or children being wickedly promiscuous before they even know how to spell it.

**Prologue Part 2: Concerning Parents**

"When I was 14, my father knew nothing; when I was 21, I was amazed how much the old man had learned in 7 years" – Mark Twain

It is well known that sub-adult children never see their parents as people, only as "Mum" and "Dad". The children do not see their parents as fallible human beings, with their own histories, and their own strengths and failings. The children gain and/or suffer for this factors, but only after many years do they see that, what they become as people is deeply affected by where and who they came from. A parent's own history can affect how their children are brought up, and what emotional baggage they carry through their lives.


	3. Concerning Molly and Arthur Weasley

** T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Concerning Arthur and Molly Weasley**

Arthur Weasley and Molly Prewitt met at Hogwarts, where they were quickly recognised as being a very powerful wizard and witch, respectively. Their proficiency with spells, charms and other magic were sufficiently high that they were drafted into the Order of the Phoenix before graduation, to work with experienced Aurors, Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall, and others.

They fell in love in fifth year, and eloped at eighteen in light of the fact that they might not survive the first wizarding war with Voldemort, and so why wait. Molly started producing children shortly thereafter (Bill being born when Molly and Arthur were but 20 years old), and had all six of her offspring before Voldemort killed Lily and James Potter some eleven years later, and was "diminished" by Lily's protective essence when he tried to kill Harry.

The Order quickly discovered that, although Molly was extremely proficient in protective and defensive magic, she was not particularly much as a fighter. Her main work within the Order, and indeed in her family, was the application of protective wards. The fact that none of the members of her family were harmed during the First Wizarding War shows how effective her work in this area was.

On the other hand, Arthur Weasley's shining talents lay in the area of detection spells and the discovery of hidden things, in essence, the circumvention of protective spells (in their private lives, this played out as Molly and Arthur's games revolving around the removal or retention of clothing – sort of wizarding strip poker). He passed the training courses up to the level of Stage 3 Auror, but did not practise as a Dark Wizard Captor. However, his work at the Ministry of Magic on the prevention of Misuse of Muggle Artefacts required that he work with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLE) in raids on Dark Wizards' houses, where his abilities to discover things that were magically hidden, and his auror training in defence, proved vital to the missions.

The school-age Weasley children were unaware of the details of their parents' work with the Order and the Ministry. When Bill and Charlie came of age and were drafted into the Order themselves, they came to appreciate the skills that their parents had and the very high level of those skills.

At home, Molly and Arthur did their best for their large family on a low-level bureaucrat's salary. The kids, and frequent guests, always had plenty to eat, prepared well. They kept chickens on the land surrounding their house (called the Burrow) just outside the wizarding hamlet of Ottery St Catchpole, which also had a small orchard and a small lake. Knuts were tight, and successive children often were clothed in hand-me-downs, but they never went cold what with Molly's homemade jumpers (can't really say hand-made, as she used enchanted knitting needles).

Molly and Arthur also recognised that their children would need to be comfortable in their own skins, so swimming in the pond was often _au naturel_. The kids quickly learned that grown men and women were shaped differently than children of the same genders, and also discovered the genesis of their mother's nick-name as her rather buxom body had parts that were not exactly rigidly attached. Sometimes Molly and Ginny wore women's swimming costumes (of muggle style, found in magazines that Arthur and the twin brought home) just because they were pretty, and they felt good wearing them.

When Ginevra (Ginny) was born as the first female Weasley child in many generations, things changed a bit. Molly doted on her daughter, and realized that hand-me-downs from her older brothers just would not do. Having already discovered what she called "the rule of knickers" (i.e., that the price of women's underwear had a strong negative correlation with the amount of material in the garments in question), Molly perfected her abilities in the transfiguration of garments. She was already very good at it, having had to modify and adjust clothes for five boys, but really polished her skills at buying from the near-by big-box store (WarlockMart), and adjusting the "granny-panties" into frilly lacy things (she had long done this kind of thing for her own {and Arthur's} pleasure, but the new presence of a daughter let her run wild). Molly became very over-protective of her daughter, and made sure that the boys knew their job was to protect her as well. This over-protective nature has some negative effects on the self-esteem of her youngest son, as he felt that he was an unnecessary addition to the family which was just waiting for a daughter, and he was the penultimate (i.e., failed) attempt to have a girl.

Unfortunately, Molly's practicing these transfigurative skills were observed and emulated by the twins. When the parents were not in the immediate vicinity, Fred and George would practice on their younger siblings (to older brothers, younger brothers always qualify more as test subjects than beloved kin, and a younger sister added some challenge to the process). Ron bore the brunt of this experimentation, and there were many occasions when at school at Pendragon Primary (in Ottery St Catchpole), when Ron's clothes would either disappear entirely or suddenly be so large that they would fall off under their own weight. Ginny did not go unaffected by her brothers' attentions, particularly when she was talking with male classmates and found herself standing in her underwear, or nude, or in a clown outfit, or wearing fairies' wings, or other some get-up.

Arthur and Molly also recognized that their children would need to have an awareness of the pleasures of the flesh, if they were to have a happy married life themselves. The muffling spells applied to their bedroom did not completely silence the sounds emanating in the night, which of course annoyed Percy, and greatly amused the twins. Ginny called these 'happy sounds'.

Fred and George acquired a collection of Playwizard, and a few issues of Playwitch (for scholarly comparison), as well as some "skin mags" when they went shopping in muggle stores with their father. As pre-teens and teenagers (who of course believe that they are inherently brilliant, or at least far smarter than their parents), they assumed that they had the magazines well hidden and their parents were entirely unaware of the existence of them – this of course was completely false given Arthur's talents and skills.

The moving pictures in the wizarding periodicals demonstrated, in quite specific detail, ways of pleasuring others and themselves. When the twins started practicing these lessons and "amusing" themselves, Arthur remarked to Molly about the twins' "misuse of muggle artefacts" (the twins were puzzled when they heard their mother guffawing loudly, while they were "otherwise engaged"). When the twins showed their younger siblings the "documentation", Ron got completely flustered (as he was getting to the stage where the difference between men and women was becoming relevant, and the contradiction of what was permissible with women not related to you, and the close presence of women with whom these practices were definitely frowned upon, was very confusing), and Ginny was intrigued as to what apparently turned teen-aged boys into drooling idiots (not that, in her female opinion, this was a particularly great change in most cases), and what they did in their excited states.


	4. Concerning Elizabeth and Dan Granger

** T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Concerning Elizabeth and Dan Granger**

Elizabeth Laffee Granger had been a very plain girl with mousey straight brown hair, who was destined to grow up to be a very plain woman. She was extremely intelligent, shy and bookish, and this and her unremarkable appearance made her, of course, the target for the cliques of "pretty" girls who traded on their looks as they dreamt of being carried off by a handsome prince to live happily ever after – their lack of perspective, and indeed the lack of availability of unattached handsome princes, never seemed to cross their minds.

Elizabeth was fairly good as sports, played field hockey, and was on the swim team at school. Her field hockey days ended, and her interest in facial reconstruction began, when she had her cheekbone and three teeth broken during a game with a rival school. Her oral surgeon explained the work he was doing to rebuild her cheekbone to a state that she would not have sinus problems for the rest of her life, and her dentist also explained the root canal work and dental caps she was applying. While her face was healing, Elizabeth spent more time swimming, as this could be done without applying too much pressure to the injured areas. She quit the swim team, as diving into the water for races just hurt too much. However, she would swim long distances thinking of her future. Seeing how her doctors had taken a broken teenage girl and gently rebuilt her face somewhat prettier than before but certainly no plainer, she decided that dentistry and oral surgery would be her life's work.

Elizabeth had also been what they call a "late-bloomer", as her body did not start to become "womanly" until she was fifteen years old. At that point however, she really blossomed, out-shining the cliques of girls who had been so proud of their figures for a couple years while ridiculing Elizabeth for her lack of same. She became quite self-conscious of her new physique (in part due to rather severe stretch marks), and found the new very active attention of the boys in her school (most of whom had pointedly and crudely ignored her in the pre-"body" days) to be completely hypocritical and distasteful – she was the same person she had always been, so if they were only attracted by superficialities (such as enlarged breasts and hips), she had absolutely no time for them.

Elizabeth never understood how her classmates were so proud of their breasts, as they had really done nothing to achieve them. She was not proud of, nor ashamed of her body, as she could not understand pride (or shame, for that matter) in something which required no particular effort. Pride was for something you had done or achieved, and shame was for something done wrong, but neither applied to something that just 'was'. However, due to vicious teasing to the point of harassment by other girls and some boys, she was rather shy and modest about wearing revealing clothes or swimwear.

Elizabeth had always worn her hair very long, to waist length when she could. In her teenage years this partially disguised her lack of bosom until her figure began to blossom, and then to obscure her "excess" of body. Because of her frequent swims, her long hair took on a sheen which got a lot of favourable comments (and a good deal of jealousy from other girls).

It has been said that children can be thoughtful and kind, but in groups they are vicious beasts that make rabid hyenas back down (we didn't get to the top of the food chain by being nice). Elizabeth soon found herself the target of attacks by her schoolmates, returning from a swim to find her clothing scattered across the schoolyard and her underpants flying up the flagpole, with all the other girls laughing at her, and commenting on her deformities (while she has having her face rebuilt). This of course made her shyness worse, but also fuelled a drive to succeed and show these nasty people what she could do. There were some petty thoughts about what she would do if any of her classmates ever ended up in her dental chair.

One unfortunate aspect of her social ostracism occurred in her sixth year of secondary school. She had been feeling very ill, and was on her way to see the school nurse when some of the other girls pushed her into the sharp corner of a table in the classroom (later claiming that they had just bumped her, and had apologised, which was of course a blatant lie). She felt even worse from the impact, and went to the girls' washroom where she collapsed. At the end of the day, the school custodian found her writhing in pain from peritonitis from her ruptured appendix. After the operation to clean out her insides and repair the damage, she didn't heal well, and ended up with a large keloid scar. Between her stretch marks and the keloid, Elizabeth decided her bikini days were behind her - not that she had ever gone in for bikinis anyway, and she would stick to full one-piece swim suits from then on, as she had all along.

There was a family story in the Laffee clan about a great-great uncle Morgan who had been a stage magician in Brighton. He had gone by the stage-name of Morgan La Fee, and claimed to be a direct descendant of Morgana La Fee (of Arthurian fame) – he was known for a number of illusions that even other top stage magicians couldn't figure out how to do.

Dan Granger was a bushy-haired genius who studied hard and was generally referred to as the class swot. He was a brilliant strategist on the rugby field at school until a rival school decided that they didn't like losing every time they played Dan's team, and that some of the boys should remedy the situation. When the pile of bodies was cleared by the referees and coaches, Dan was found to have a broken leg, crushed bones in his left ankle, both shoulders dislocated, a broken nose and cheek, and seven fewer teeth than he had had at the game's start. After the doctors had worked on him, they pointed out that his running days, and hence his previously promising rugby career, were no longer a possibility, even as a coach as it would require standing for long periods. They recommended swimming as a physical activity that would allow his body to heal in a gentler environment. Because of the nuisance of combing out his curly brown hair after swimming, Dan kept his hair quite short.

Dan took to swimming like a fish to water. Initially, he focussed on breast-stroke, as this did not hurt his injured shoulders too much, with the limited range of motion he had after the physiotherapy. Eventually, he managed Australian crawl, but never got back sufficient mobility in his shoulders to be able to do the butterfly. The chlorine in the pool's water also prevented the recurring infections in his face that came with the extensive facial surgery as his sinuses were rebuilt. He also found that the chlorinated water helped reduce the chronic congestion from the internal damage to his nasal passages.

Dan had been thinking of a medical career, perhaps focussing on sports injuries, and had been looking into orthopaedic surgery as a specialty, but the injuries to his legs were going to prevent him standing around an operating table for hours on end. As his face was being reconstructed, he noticed that the dentist was always sitting down on a movable stool. At that point, Dan knew he was going to go into dentistry.

Dan and Elizabeth met at the dental college. They had quickly noticed each other in their classes, as they were clearly the brightest students of their year. From their well-reasoned answers to the professors' questions, and their well-prepared projects, they had come to admire each other. One day in the fall of their first year, they met for coffee, and found they both were going to the swimming pool that evening to relax and work out stiff muscles from hours in class. They went swimming together several times a week from then on, becoming good friends. Dan proposed in the middle of their second year and they graduated as husband and wife.

They both interned with a large dental practice in a suburb south of London, where their skills were sharpened and much appreciated. Elizabeth's expert work on sports injuries, and her caring chair-side manner, gained great respect and attracted a healthy practice on her own, even before she and Dan aced their qualifying exams. With their exams complete, they were both invited into the practice as junior partners, which was unheard of for such recent graduates, but any of their profession who heard of this honour said "well, of course". They soon took over the practice when the senior dentists decided that, being as dentists tend to have the shortest lifespan of most professionals, early retirement to the Caribbean looked good.

Because of their own injuries, their lovemaking was very gentle (passionate kissing which caused screaming pain {residual nerve damage} is not really conducive to warm feelings). In due course, Elizabeth was pregnant, and in due-er course found she had gestational diabetes. In due-er-er course, she delivered a healthy but rather plain daughter, by caesarean section; the scar healed in with another keloid. Due to the bad scarring, and the diabetes, Elizabeth was advised that another baby would not be a good idea, and little Hermione Jean was to be an only child.

Dan had a habit of addressing his wife by a range of possible nicknames, depending on his and her mood. In formal or professional gatherings, she was "Elizabeth", while in day-to-day, around the house goings-on, she was "Liz". When they went to a social gathering, he called her "Eliza", and when they were cuddling in front of a fireplace with him stroking her hair, she was his "Beth".

This variability of her mother's identity confused young Hermione until she was about eight, as she was always 'Hermione', and nothing but; she was adamant that people called her by her complete name and refused to answer to any nicknames. When her classmates tried to call her 'Hermy One', she would yell "Not the One. Not the One."

In later years, Dan and Elizabeth often thought of the strange creature who was their daughter. He had given her Jean as a middle name, as it was a family name of long tradition, having been the name of his favourite grandmother who had told him stories of long-past generations of Grangers. Apparently, the name had originally been Jeanie if the bearer was a girl or Djin if a boy. There was also an old story that this name had been brought into the family during the crusades when a Sir Alfred de Grange had married a Muslim woman, who made changes and amulets to protect her husband from harm – the knights wearing her charms found that their battle wounds were generally minor and healed quickly, which of course led to suspicions of witchcraft. Elizabeth thought of her long-distant uncle, and other relatives who seemed to have knacks for doing odd things. Dan and Elizabeth sometimes discussed their respective family histories, and wondered how many generations had passed before the recessive magical genes had recombined in Hermione.


	5. Concerning Xenophilius andDryad Lovegood

** T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily (I wish) or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Concerning Xenophilius and Dryad Lovegood**

Xenophilius Lovegood was a pureblood wizard who had excelled in Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures during his school days at Hogwarts (in the early 1940's, in Ravenclaw house). He attained his Mastery licence in both fields within four years of graduation, which was rather rare. His interest lay in obscure plants and creatures in far-away places, which lead to the believe that he was completely crazy and making up most of the things he spoke of (similar to the dismissal of the existence of the "Wallace Line" as impossible by British geologists and biologists who hadn't bothered going to Indonesia to see the facts for themselves, in spite of Wallace's 30 years of excellent documentation).

Having difficulty getting his research published in the mainstream (magical) scientific journals and learned conference proceedings, because of the more orthodox wizards and witches having "quibbles" with the creditability of his works, Xenophilius started publishing his work himself as the "Journal of Magical Herbology". His publication threw in other unusual items of interest and satirical diatribes, as well as scientifically based humour. Similar to the muggle publication of the "Journal of Behavioural Psychology" which published "The Worm-Runner's Digest" as a flip-side, the JMH (as it was known to subscribers who could take a joke - a rather uncommon trait) started publishing "The Quibbler" as alternate issues. Eventually, the Quibbler became so popular (in some circles) that Xenophilius quit publishing the JMH all together due to lack of time.

As publisher of the Quibbler, and having a reputation as a bit of a crank, Xenophilius found that he could get away with making statements that would have been extremely unpopular in certain (pureblood) circles. However, as those circles tended to dismiss him and his writings out of hand, he could print editorials which got people thinking and "rocking the boat" politically, but which the nastier members of the powers-that-be would never link to him (thus, in some instances, quite literally "dodging the bullet"). He got into the habit of saying exactly what he thought, regardless of how others felt about it, or how incredible it sounded. As publisher, he also got to include his research work which would not have made it into the "learned" journals.

One way to maintain his reputation as a complete "whacko" was to include odd completely off-the-wall editorials. These were recognised as jokes by some, who saw that some of his apparently strange comments showed (and simultaneously hid) an extremely perceptive view of the world. For those whose worldview was dominated by their prejudices, they were just confirmation that Mr Lovegood was no threat to their rightful place in the universe. Xenophilius, of course, loved "pulling their chains".

Xenophilius settled in the Devonshire wizarding village of Ottery St Catchpole, where he carried on his work on plants where they grew well in the southern English climate, and contributed to the disillusion wards around the village which limited muggle awareness of their magical neighbours. One of his more notable contributions to the village was the large beds of "Forget-Me-Now" flowers around the Pendragon Primary School playground, where kids flying around the grounds at recess time went completely unnoticed by the non-magical townsfolk.

Coming from a Scandinavia background himself (via some Viking "settlers" to England in the early 1000's C.E.), he was very interested in creatures of boreal forests and the Lapp tundra. His major problem in these pursuits was his complete and utter inability to learn languages (other than the Latin used to describe biological, which he mispronounced abysmally).

After several frustrating years fighting with his absolute inability to learn Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Lapp, Faroese, Icelandic, and other Norse tongues (including the more obscure languages spoken by Norse trolls, gnomes, and other folk), in the 1970's he pursued a relationship with the NorseWitch Society (the signs having been treated with a charm so that muggles read the headquarters buildings banners as the "Norwich" society), which was a social club for magical folks of Scandinavian descent. There he met a Norwegian-born couple by the name of Astrid and Tor Torsen. Astrid had "emigrated" to Britain as a child with her family (and many other Norwegian wizards and witches) in the late 1930's when some rather nasty German wizards came to Norway trying to recruit the local magical folk for the upcoming war. Tor had served as a secret agent and saboteur during that war.

Astrid claimed that she was descended from Norwegian tree nymphs, and was a long-lost cousin of the Veelas, who apparently were descended from Swedish nymphs who had migrated south during the ice age when the Scandinavian forests were covered by glaciers, the Norwegian and existing Swedish nymphs returning as the ice sheets retreated, leaving the Veelas in the more pleasant south where their long blonde hair and magical allure was even more effective among the darker-haired wizards of the south than with the blond males of the north (for that extra bit of power and control). Astrid's favourite saying was "Ve come from de trees, you know", in her light accent. One idiomatic consequence was, when angry at her husband, she would refer to him as a "son of a birch".

Astrid's husband (Tor Torsen) claimed that he was descended directly from the weather elemental himself (who was later claimed by Norse muggles as one of their primary gods, hence his surname). When he had been hitting the Aquavit ("Norse is Norse and Soused is soused") or got riled up, Tor tended to throw around small lightning bolts or fireballs, for which reason the home he and Astrid lived in was largely built from fire-resistant materials. During his war service, there had been a strange number of inconvenient (to the Germans) storms grounding their airplanes, which also tended to catch fire a lot; Allied planes seemed to have very good weather for operations such as the sinking of the Tirpitz.

At Hogwarts (where he had been known as Phil), Xenophilius had known of Astrid (Hufflepuff), but being several years ahead of her, and other than a shared passion for Herbology (him of small plants, and her for large ones), had little to do with her – his reputation for being crazy didn't help in social situations.

Xenophilius and the Torsens travelled together to the north of Scandinavia many times on research (for him) and family visits (for them), where he benefitted from their fluency in the languages, and they benefitted from his (possibly) tall tales of some of the strange creatures he was looking into.

On their frequent trips to northern climes, the Torsens introduced Xenophilius to the practice of the sauna, which was a style of nude steambath, followed by jumping into cold water to seal the cleansed skin. Also on the trips into the tundra, when nature called, it was difficult to "visit a bush" when the tallest plants are grasses. As in Japan, nudity became something "often seen, but not looked at". With this relaxed attitude, clothes became things that you wore for comfort, warmth, or to look attractive. The concept of "pretty" went well beyond the muggle definition of the word, as magically enhanced senses made the view of a pretty women or handsome man into a transcendent experience.

One other practice of the Norse witches was that, on warm moonlit nights, they would dance in groves of trees, clothed only in the light (the term "skyclad" is commonly used to this condition). Phil and Tor would sometime join them in the dance, and sometime just watch the nude witches wove arboreal spells through their dance. Tor would usually join the dance himself if the weather showed signs of rain and thunder, and sometimes could be seen outdoors during vicious storms, revelling in the experience and apparently directing the lightning bolts. As her name implied, Astrid's other interests included astronomy, and she and Tor would often dance together or make love under the northern lights; as the lights seldom flared over England, these dances generally took place during their northern trips, the which were not exactly hidden on the moonlit tundra.

One particular point of mutual interest was research into an elusive genus of magical creatures of disparate sizes, being comprised of the greater Fufflenarg (großenfüflnarg, in the German spelling), and the lesser fufflenarg (kleinesfüflnarg, or nargl). The greater was known to inhabit Norse pine forests, being about 3 metres tall and about 10 centimetres wide, and hiding behind evergreens so effectively that their very existence was thought mythical. The lesser fufflenarg was much smaller and even more elusive, inhabiting bushes and being fond of mistletoe – the nargl was also quite mischievous and, like blue jays and racoons, tended to steal bright objects or other human objects. Nargls are very shy creatures, and to obscure their presence from those hunting for them, they would often cast "notice-me-not" spells, or induce sleep ("narglepsy"); the inability of most people to actually see nargls enhanced the belief that the small creatures did not actually exist.

The Torsens had a daughter Dryad, who was herself a genius with small plants and potions made primarily from northern herbs. During summer holidays from school at Hogwarts, she would accompany her parents (and Phil) on trips to Norway and other northern lands. Once she graduated from Hogwarts herself, she attained her Potions mastery within three years (an almost unheard of feat), and continued the trips north. As her interest in northern herbs coincided with Phil's researches, they became close friends and occasional rivals for the limited supplies of tundra vegetation. Dryad had a natural fluency in languages, bordering on telepathic.

Unlike most other wizarding folk, Dryad also took an interest in non-magical potions. After graduating from Hogwarts, she attended Edinburgh University, attaining her doctorate in organic chemistry. Due to her mastery in both magical and non-magical "potions", her experiments and later her commercial products had ingredients that most magical potions masters would not have recognized, and which gave her work many unique properties.

Dryad was, like her mother, a strikingly beautiful blonde, but was rather shorter than her parents. This came to be quite an advantage, as she became quite friendly with the gnomes of the Faroe Islands and in central Sweden, peoples who were very shy and distrustful of taller people (or "biggers" as they called them). The Swedish gnomes, with the dwarfs of southern Europe, were among the few magical folk who were comfortable working with iron, living as they did near the large iron deposits of the central part of their country – they came to be known as the Ferro-gnomes.

Working with the gnomic people, Dryad developed a range of magical perfumes which used arctic and subarctic plants (and some animal residue like lemming droppings in their formulae.

{A/N: If muggles can use ambergris from the intestines of sick sperm whales, why not?}

Some of these potions were more complex than others, and depended on rare ingredients which took extensive trips to collect (such as the requirement for one particular potion of 3 hectolitres of mayfly sweat). Her perfumes had certain aphrodisiacal properties, and came in 20 different grades, from the lowest potency "I would maybe like you to notice me sometime within the next year or so" to the most powerful "Now!". These became extremely popular among the magical peoples of Europe, particularly the teenaged witches, and brought her great fortune and acclaim.

Over many years of travelling together, and frequently seeing each other in the nude, Xenophilius and Dryad became closer, eventually falling in love in spite of their 30 year age difference. When they married (in the mid 1970's) Xenophilius added a potions lab to his house, so his new wife could continue her research and potion-making at home any time she wished, rather than having to commute to her lab in London (as an accomplished apparater, this commute was not exactly an onerous excursion). Sometimes, when an experimental potion came together in the middle of the night, there would be a shower of sparks over the house like fireworks, which sometimes annoyed their magical neighbours (particularly those interested in astronomy, and who had their dark-adapted eyes blinded by the sudden bright lights). One such shower of sparks announcing a "potion coming together" was actually the conception of their daughter Luna.


	6. Growing UP Ginny and Ron

**T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Growing Up Ginny (and Ron) **

The difference in Ginny and Ron's reaction to their upbringing were extreme.

Ron grew up feeling that the twins got a lot of their parents' attention (true, but mostly Molly and Arthur were busy trying to keep the twins from committing harm or criminal acts with their pranks), and also feeling that he never got anything new. He also grew up with the understanding that he was supposed to protect his younger sister at all time, usually from other boys staring at her body when it came unwrapped (usually when Fred and George were somewhere close-by, laughing their heads off). Ron also felt very much abused by his two elder brothers, who had to be restrained by Charlie and Bill on more than one occasion. Ron came to idolise his oldest two brothers but harbour a strong resentment for the twins. He was very jealous of his classmates who had "things", and felt very put-upon and neglected.

Ginny, however, became a bit spoiled, but also developed a wicked sense of humour and tendency towards pranks, like the twins. She came to have no sense of modesty, as she learned that she was the same person inside, whether her clothes disappeared or not. She also learned household skills like the transfiguration of clothes, so that what she wore to school in the morning may have no resemblance to what she was wearing when she came home (to her mother's initial horror, until Molly learned what Ginny was doing). When swimming at the pond, Ginny and her good friend Luna Lovegood might start off in one swimming costume, change it into another partway through the day, and end in sometime else entirely (or nothing, if the day was pleasant enough for all-over sun tanning). Her pranking abilities were often used to embarrass Ron, as she would sometimes ask him what he thought of her outfit, and having it disappear while he was watching. This also did not go over well with Ron's emotional stability.

As Ginny grew, her closeness with her doting mother also grew into a deep love which in future years would remain a close friendship (in spite of both of them having fierce tempers, and frequently having screaming matches). As this closeness grew, Ron felt more and more like he was the failed attempt at a daughter, and generally unwanted in spite of his parents' warm hearts and loving ways.

When she was 10 (the year before she went to Hogwarts), while all the boys were away at school, Ginny decided to try out some of the costumes and moves that she had seen in her brothers' "study guides of the female form" (as the twins referred to their magazine collection). She transfigured a housedress into a break-away evening gown, her knee socks into silk stockings, and her girlish underwear into a skimpy bra and knicker set – as she had seen in one of the magazines, she made her underwear a bright scarlet satin. She put on some music with a heavy percussive beat, and started to dance. Molly, having sensed the transfiguration spells and recognising the "flavour" of them, went upstairs to see what Ginny was up to. When she entered Ginny's room, Molly revised her enquiry, as it became obvious that the wording should be "What was Ginny down to?", as the gown had been discarded, and the bra was being removed as she entered the room.

Molly looked at her daughter, shook her head, and exclaimed "Oh, Ginny, no!" The girl stopped what she was doing, and blushed, saying "Sorry, mama" and her skimpy scarlet panties started changing back into the pink cotton with yellow butterflies (magically fluttering around on them, which tickled) hipster style they had originally been, and the stockings slipped down returning to their knee sock origins. Molly giggled and said "Sorry Gin, that's not what I meant". She waved her wand, and the knickers shrank down into a sequined g-string of forest green (even tinier than before) with iridescent green silk scarves falling from the points of her hips, the knee socks slid back up the girl's legs as lacy stockings, and Ginny's hair had some glitter added into it. Ginny felt herself growing taller, and looked down to see her slippers turning into matching forest green three-inch high heels. Molly said "All right, extend your arms and spin around". As Ginny did so, with the scarves swirling around her legs, her long red hair swirling around her torso, and the twin swirls becoming two shimmering cones of contrasting colour, Molly sighed "Beautiful". At Ginny's puzzled look as she asked "What were you upset about?", Molly gave her a sly conspiratorial wink, and said "I just thought that scarlet clashed really, really badly with your hair". For years afterwards, when anyone mentioned colours clashing, Ginny and Molly would look at each other and break into giggling fits.


	7. Growing Up Hermione

**T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Growing Up Hermione**

"The nail that sticks up gets pounded down" – Japanese Proverb

Being an only child, Hermione got a bit spoiled by her parents' attention. When she was a baby, her mother only worked part-time during the day, and then she worked evenings to accommodate other working parents while Dan was home and little Hermione was sleeping. The girl got very used to having her mother to herself most of the day, and got rather annoyed whenever she had to give up the privilege. There were few other children her age in their neighbourhood, so Hermione's closest friends were her parents.

As a toddler (when the terrible two's struck), Dan and Emma started to worry about their daughter. When Hermione threw a tantrum, as children of that age will and do, things that should not fly around the house tended to do so. When Dan gave the little girl her first dental checkup, he tried using some dental floss which hurt her gums, and for some reason he felt compelled to reach over and stick a sharp dental instrument into his hand.

However, the little girl's strangeness seemed to have some benefits, if they could believe that Hermione was the cause. One day, Emma was having a bath with Hermione, who was two and a half years old at the time. The little girl pointed at the keloid scars and stretch marks on her mother's body, and said "Mama got boo-boos. They hurt? I kiss, make better", applying a child's most common DIY medical treatment by kissing Emma's keloid scars. Over the next two weeks, the scars completely disappeared; Emma found that she actually missed the scars which had been her constant companions for many years. When she asked little Hermione what she had done, the toddler shrugged and said "I awayed them".

It rapidly became clear that Hermione was intent on getting her own way. In later years, this trait would be called "bossiness". She reacted badly to pain, often lashing out in ways not easily understood by herself or others.

It was also clear very early that Hermione was very smart. She had started to speak in coherent sentences when she was two, and was reading simple books by three and first year primary school story books by four. She had a nearly photographic (or eidetic) memory, and could recall almost everything she had read, seen or heard. By the time she got to school, her parents were calling her their little know-it-all. With her highly intelligent and well educated parents as her best (and almost only) friends, Hermione was used to dealing with adults, not children, and her bookish nature has greatly accelerated.

The family sometimes went on winter holidays to beaches in France, Spain, or the Canary Islands. As was Emma's long-standing custom, she and Hermione wore pretty one-piece swim suits. When she was three, the little girl noticed other women wearing only the bottom half of bikinis. She asked her mother "Why aren't they wearing their swim-suits?" Emma replied "Well, they are, but here they only wear the bottom half. We don't do that." Hermione asked "What do they call that kind of a suit?" to which Emma replied "The call that going 'topless'". Hermione's little face scrunched up a bit, and Emma and Dan could see their daughter's mind working vigorously on this description, trying to understand the situation. The girl then blurted out, loudly enough for the people around them on the beach to hear, "But they're not topless. They just don't cover their tops".

When she was five, Hermione looked at the other women on the beach who were wearing bikinis, or going topless. She looked at her mother and said "They're not wearing their tops. Why can't we do that too?" Emma commented that she didn't feel comfortable wearing a bikini given her stretch marks. Hermione asked "What about me? I don't have stretch marks." To which Emma replied that she didn't feel comfortable Hermione showing that much skin, both because she was shy about her own body and didn't want the girl to sunburn. Hermione thought about this a bit, and then stared hard at her mother's body. That evening, Dan commented that Emma's marks looked like they were fading. A week later (by the end of their holiday), Emma's stretch marks were completely gone.

The following year (another beach holiday), Hermione asked again why they couldn't wear bikinis or go topless. Emma tried on a bikini, but found she was still uncomfortable wearing one, much less taking off her top. However, six year old Hermione ran around the beach in her new bikini with a pretty floral pattern. On the last day of the trip, Hermione took off her own top, to her mother's blushing disapproval. The little girl asked why not, as she had no "top" to be shy about. She then stared at Emma's swim suit, which changed from a long one-piece to a very short one-piece, (i.e., a bikini bottom) but having the same pattern (although much less of it). Emma shrieked, and covered up her exposed breasts. Her daughter asked "Mommy, why are you afraid? You have beautiful tits." Emma was shocked and said "Why on earth did you say that?" to which Hermione said, "I can hear Daddy thinking you have beautiful tits, much prettier than the other ladies on the beach." While Dan blushed furiously, Emma ran back to their beach cabin, also blushing furiously, returning in a normal length one-piece swimsuit, and fiercely telling Hermione not to do that again. From this the girl learned again that what other people do may not be acceptable to her parents, and that nudity wasn't always acceptable even where it obviously was to others, and more importantly, that her mother was very uncomfortable with revealing her own body (at least in pubic). She also learned that her mother was uncomfortable with Hermione being undressed in public or otherwise showing off her body.

It was only later that Emma realized that she had merely assumed that Hermione had been responsible for changing her swimsuit, and that her daughter had not denied it.

This confusion as to modesty and different levels of acceptability didn't make sense to the young girl, and until much later, she never really came to terms with the difference between nudity (being unclothed) and nakedness (undressed, but with the strong emotional involvement, usually with negative feelings), and when each was acceptable. Her parents didn't seem to have trouble at home being nude, and at times being naked together (with very positive emotional aspects).

When Hermione got to school age, she found that she did not fit in with her classmates. The girls wanted to play with dolls, and the boys wanted to play "Doctor" (causing more discomfort with nakedness and a lasting distrust of boys) or didn't want to play with her at all because she wasn't pretty, and no-one wanted to just sit and read books. With her bossy nature, she wanted to set the rules of all the games, and wanted to tell all her classmates how they should do their work, and that they should study hard when they just wanted to play. She rapidly found she had no friends.

When Hermione's adult teeth came in at age seven, being dentists, Dan and Emma would have been expected to have orthodontic work to "correct" the girl's buck-teeth; when they discussed the procedures and the long-term discomfort involved, Dan suggested that they could not ask any of their colleagues to do the job because "she'd kill them". Therefore, Hermione remained a brilliant, but very plain, girl with buck-teeth and bushy brown hair.

As the school years went on, the animosity of her classmates grew, as did her bossy nature- she always had to be right, and she always had to be in charge. There were times when Hermione returned home with her clothes torn from fights in the schoolyard (although she didn't tell her parents that the girls who hit her sometimes suddenly found themselves naked in the middle of the other students watching the fight, to their profound embarrassment). Eventually, the other students left her along entirely, except when they were forced, by the teachers, to work on class projects together, where the bossy know-it-all antagonised them even more. Hermione grew up a very lonely little girl.

After a few of the schoolyard fights where Hermione was more seriously hurt, Dan and Emma put Hermione into a karate class for children. Having an exciting new and very different topic to learn, with the potential for years of learning, the girl excelled at the sport, attaining her first level black belt by age eleven, at which point her world changed.

Finding out that their daughter was a witch finally explained why Emma and Dan has such an unusually little girl, who seemed to be able to do odd things, and around whom odd things just seemed to happen.

When she learned she was going to Hogwarts, Hermione felt that she was finally going to be with other people just like her, and she would finally have friends. She always felt that she deserved to have friends, and that she would have friends, but didn't seem to understand that she would have to make friends.

When she got onto the train to go to the school in the castle in Scotland, she tried to find a compartment that wasn't already full of people who already were busy chatting with each other as old friends. She found a compartment with two boys about her own age. One was dressed in shabby hand-me-down clothes, and was hungrily eating chocolates as if he had never had chocolate before. The other boy was a scrawny badly bruised kid whose clothes looked four sizes too large, and who looked very poor, but who had apparently just bought the whole "goody" cart worth of treats (in Yorkshire, they refer to the practice as "flinging brass") so apparently he had money but had only recently come into it and was trying to show off this fact. She decided that here were two emotional cripples that she could boss around or at least impress with her knowledge of where they were going. With her rather socially-stunted upbringing, she failed to recognise that the two boys had both been bullied for most of their lives, and bitterly resented her approach to conversation. Later these two boys became her first and best friends.

Why Hermione had been sorted into Gryffindor was a mystery to much of the school. With her intellect, Ravenclaw was an obvious choice, but when she kept trying to respond to questions asked by Professor Snape (who nastily ignored the muggleborn girl) and stood up to Malfoy and other "pureblood" bigots, her Gryffindor courage became evident – in later years, her courage became a defining characteristic.

Having been raised with normal physical education classes in school, swimming with her parents, and karate lessons, Hermione was used to regular physical activity. At Hogwarts, she found the lack of varied exercise (other than climbing lots and lots of stairs carrying her books) boring, so she kept up her _kata_ practise in her dormitory at night. Her roommates were at first curious ("Is that muggle dancing?"), then dismissive, then just ignored it as just something that Hermione did ("Who can understand these muggle-borns? They actually exercise").


	8. Growing Up Luna

**T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Growing Up Luna**

Normal is a statistical concept. Therefore, a genius is inherently abnormal.

At Pendragon Primary school, there was a pair of girls about the same age, one with long bright red hair, and the other with long blonde hair. Both were rather short and very pretty, and they were best friends. The red-head came from a large family of boys, and was desperate for a female friend her own age. The blonde was an only child of brilliant parents, and was generally considered a bit odd.

Since the time of her birth (or even before), Luna Hamadryad Estrellita Lovegood had been travelling around the world seeing all manner of strange sites, plants and creatures. She had seen animals that most people had not; when a four year old girl tells adults that she has seen creatures that they (the adults) have not, she is often accused of making the whole thing up. One particular creature she had seen was the elusive nargl, which seemed to consider the small curious blonde child no threat, and did not flee or retaliate with spells when she saw one, and it saw her.

Since early childhood, Luna had gone dancing with her mother and grandmother under starry or moonlit sky. She had been out under the northern lights with her parents and grandparents, and had danced in thunderstorms with her grandfather. Being unclothed was just another state of dress, and thinking about it in later years, Luna considered that she had often been nude, but she had never been naked. Her attitude to clothes was a constant question of "Is it pretty?"

At her maternal grandfather's knee, Luna had learned some simple weather spells ("Rain, rain, go away...", and others), and later learned to direct lightning bolts. She enjoyed fireworks, whether man-made or natural, and she thought of thunder as the applause that goes with a good lightning display.

From her maternal grandmother, she learned about trees and the magical folks that live there. She thought of the dryads and other forest spirits as her cousins.

From her mother she learned household spells such as cooking, and elementary potion making. To a very young child, the difference between cooking and potion making was not completely clear, and in later years she would add unusual ingredients to her culinary efforts; sometimes, as in the case of betony or sweet woodruff or other herbs the mixture worked, but in other cases it did not - the wormwood gelatine dessert was not, to say the least, a big hit. Luna learned to take the successes and failures of these experiments with equal unruffled interest, gaining knowledge and insight from each new result. Given her mother's profession, Luna thought of all such efforts as experimental potions.

To Luna, that fact that you could add a fungus to fruit juice and it would make a very pleasant drink, or add the same item to a mixture of flour and water and it would expand and expand before you baked it to make bread, or melting sand and making glass, were just as magical and wondrous as changing lead into gold (which was relatively simple when you knew how).

From her father, she learned to not be concerned with other people's opinions, and to say what you thought and believed true, regardless of their uninformed prejudices. She learned to observe carefully, and form her own ideas and conclusions regardless of where the conclusions took her. She also developed a whimsical sense of humour, finding that whimsy and nonchalantly stating bizarre opinions tended to keep others quite off balance – this also tended to keep annoying people away, and provided a lot of fun.

The person resulting from this upbringing was a young woman who had very sharp analytical skills, and an utter lack of caring that others thought her observations and conclusions were completely crazy. This lack of emotional involvement with the opinions of others was seen (by the others) as very strange. As she had learned her magic informally from proficient adults, Luna had learned to perform some wand-less magic well before her contemporaries.

It is said that intelligence can be defined as the ability to see patterns where others might not. With her wide travel experience beyond that of her contemporaries, and the attitudes of her family, Luna saw the world as a vast smorgasbord of experiences and events to observe, and come up with her own conclusions and ideas. She made connections that others did not. She made all these observations with a dispassionate curiosity, which other people saw either as a disconnected lack of understanding, or just being "spacey".

One example of Luna's worldview came the summer of her eighth year when she and her friend Ginny were swimming in the pond at the Burrow. As was often the case, they had started the day wearing one-piece swimsuits of bright floral patterns, morphing into bikinis with fish and sea-horses actively swimming around on them, switching to a one-piece suit (for Ginny) showing the dragons that her brother Charlie was hoping to work with, while Luna had charmed her suit to have nargls on it. Magical swimwear differed from muggle wear in that the nargls were aware of Ginny (who had never seen a nargl) looking for them on Luna's suit, and they kept disappearing around Luna's far side, leaving a forest pattern with no creatures visible.

Ginny asked Luna what her suit was supposed to be, and Luna said simply that it was the nargls in the Norwegian forests she had seen on a trip earlier that summer with her parents. Ginny pointed out that, in her opinion and those of most people she knew, nagls did not exist. Luna asked "You have a Harry Potter doll, don't you?" Ginny said, yes, of course, and that she was in love with Harry Potter and she would marry the heroic boy some day.

Luna asked "Have you ever seen a harrypotter?", stating the name as if it was a category of strange and elusive beast. Ginny answered "No, I haven't".

Luna asked "Do you know anyone who has seen a harrypotter?" Ginny answered "Mom and Dad saw him when he was a baby, before he was a year old".

Luna asked "Why is he a hero?" Ginny replied "He killed a very bad wizard". Luna asked further "Has anyone seen a harrypotter since then?" Ginny thought about it "No, I don't think so".

Luna said "So a baby only about one year old kills a powerful wizard, and nobody has seen him since then. How do you know he exists?" Ginny said "Everybody says he was the Boy-Who-Lived, and he is a hero".

Luna followed up "So he didn't kill the wizard, he just lived. Why does that make him a hero?" Ginny thought a bit "I don't know, but everyone says he did it and he is a hero, and I am going to marry him someday".

Luna then said quietly "Then how do you know nargls don't exist?" Ginny looked at Luna, and thought about it some more, with a new respect for her friend's point of view.

When she was nine, Luna's world changed. She was in her mother's workshop in their home when something went very wrong with the potion that Dryad was preparing. The explosion blew out the windows of the lab, and the sharp-edged pieces of flying ex-cauldron ripped through her mother's body in multiple places. Dryad's last conscious act was to cast a shield spell which prevented the shrapnel from striking the little girl, but couldn't screen her view of the damage and her mother's death. Phil ran into the room and tried to save his wife, but her injuries were far too serious. By the time the emergency medical wizards arrived, she was gone. Luna's calm demeanour led the EMWs to think that she had been stuck in the head, although there were no apparent injuries. This was just one more experience that Luna assimilated into her world view, but for the rest of her life on the anniversary of her mother's death, she could be found sitting quietly in a grove of trees with a calm almost beatific smile, and tears pouring down her face.


	9. Concerning The Curriculum

**T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Concerning the Curriculum**

Apparently, the powers-that-be at Hogwarts never considered the concept of "physical education" as part of the curriculum. Perhaps because the students got a good deal of exercise moving around the castle between classes carrying books, perhaps because magical folk didn't really have to lift things or run distances when they could fly or apparate (or have their house elves do for them), and perhaps because Healers (such as Madame Pomfrey) could provide potions which could reduce body fat and plaque build-up in the bloodstreams (partially contributing to the longer lifespan among the magical than with muggles), P.E. (or phys. ed.) had never been a priority. How students maintained any kind of healthy weight must have been a difficult problem, given the tremendous amount of food served at meals. Some (for example, a certain bushy-haired lassie) did get more of their exercise by carrying a much larger than average numbers of books around the castle.

The closest to physical exercise that most Hogwarts' students got, besides moving from class to class and their dormitories in a multi-storey stone building, was walking around the grounds, or down to Hogsmeade. Some would go to swim in the Black Lake, as there was a small cove where a hot spring made the water temperature tolerable, rather than other areas of the glacier-fed Scottish mountain lake which, in the words of one girl who had gone skinny-dipping with her boyfriend in the wrong (i.e., colder) part of the water, "made his bits retract so fast I could hear them slam into his chin". For these other areas, more senior students used warming charms so that they could paddle around (not generally being proficient swimmers), and the more sadistic students would throw other students (usually of lower years) in for the fun of it.

Moonlit skinny-dips were relatively common among senior year students, either solo or in mixed groups (some groups consisting of only two, but other variations occurred as well). Under these conditions, other physical exercises were sometimes involved, particularly if the giant squid was in the mood to tickle at the most inopportune moments.

One must wonder how and why, during the Tri-Wizard competition, a task was set for students who had never taken swimming lessons, at least not since primary school or at home during holidays, unless the supervisors actually did want students to die in the contests.

Another feature lacking from the Hogwarts education seemed to be music. As "music hath charms to sooth the savage breast", it was appropriate that, what music was taught, was under the guidance of the Charms master, Professor Filius Flitwick. Some charms required a chanted invocation, while some called for a tuneful incantation – there was great amusement when the tune was sung badly, and a charm to make a flower bud bloom ended up as a vase full of horse manure. Professor Flitwick also led the school choir which sang at the sorting ceremony and other school events. The quality (and tunefulness) of the school band depended more on incantations from the professor charming the instruments to play properly, and only relied on the students to provide the appropriate airflow, and drumbeats.

In a way, this lack of musical education was rather odd, as there were many very famous composers and musicians who were of the wizarding world. This was quite evident from their compositions and performances. For example, much of the work of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov deal with magical transformations (Swan Lake, Flight of the Bumble-Bee), Nicolo Paganinni was so accomplished on the violin that there was a rumour that he had sold his soul to the devil, and Peter Warlock's name was a dead giveaway.

As electricity didn't work at Hogwarts, radios (other than the Wizarding Wireless), record and CD players, and various brands of electronic music file players just did not work there. Many purebred wizards and witches (read "self-important bigots") felt music was something just muggles did, and thus was beneath contempt. More "enlightened" magical folk found music a delight which made tasks go quicker, helped bonding with their friends, and could be almost a form of magic itself. However, as the board of governors of the school was largely comprised of members of old pure-blood "noble" families, there was little demand at the highest levels for increasing the music components of the education of the young.

Some students had managed to obtain an old mechanical gramophone, which they had charmed to improve the fidelity of the sound reproduction, and to amplify the sound to acceptable levels for parties in the common rooms. The amplification levels had to be kept to sufficiently high levels to be heard over a couple hundred partying students, but moderate enough that it would not, quite literally, wake the dead (while Sir Nicholas was a welcome guest at most parties, Peeves was not). The gramophone was owned by Ravenclaw house whose students had developed it, and was rented out to other houses (either for cash or in trade for such contraband as Firewhiskey or various muggle-made intoxicants, the sweet taste of dark rum being particularly popular). Its use by Slytherin students was limited, as it was basically muggle technology and hence not worth consideration.

When cassette tapes and compact disks (CDs) came into being in the muggle world, like so many things of muggle origin, the wizarding world was left behind. However, various methods of recording audio and visual information did develop, so wizarding video cameras and the magical equivalents of various audio recording formats were available. The mechanical phonograph was the only device usable with both wizarding and non-magical technology.

One consequence of this difference in technologies was that, except in countries (such as Australia and the USA) where the "social distance" between muggle and magical societies was largely ignored for either historical or financial reasons, muggle and magical musical styles and performers were effectively shared up to the point where LPs were giving way to CDs (which could not be used in magical devices), after which the talent pool split into those recording on muggle equipment and those using WW (Wizarding World) methods – some wizarding punk bands specifically issued their products only on muggle formats as a form of protest. Random magical happenings at concerts or parties were generally written off as the muggles being too drunk or stoned to be aware that something extraordinary had occurred, and so were generally ignored by ministry authorities.

Another difference between magical and muggle curricula are the subjects of manual arts (or "shop") and home economics. As most manual labour was done by house elves, the board of governors again felt these topics unworthy of study. However, many students found that the creative natures of fine wood and metalwork, and fashion, particularly when combined with magically enhanced senses for the textures and colouration of fabrics and materials, were areas of artistic fascination. Consequently, although not thoroughly approved by the BOG, there were workshops and sewing rooms in obscure corners of the castle where students could meet and work. Machinery was mechanically driven, such as treadle sewing machines, and wind or water powered lathes and saws.

Minerva McGonagall supervised these activities, informally, as the handling of materials (particularly those which had been alive at one point, such as wood and natural fabrics) fell under the heading of Transfiguration. In many cases, the transfigurations were of more a mundane level such as driving nails or sewing a seam.

However, it was still an oversight that the economics of running even a wizarding home were not covered in any official way. It was assumed that wizarding parents would cover the topics with their children, if the BOG even gave it that much thought (as the "Ancient and Noble House" types just had their staff do it). This of course put muggle-borns and orphans at a distinct disadvantage, which suited the "AaNH" types to a "T".

Other features not generally publicized in the school program were the gender-related issues. As the school was of "Witchcraft and Wizardry", it is obvious that the skills and talents of male and female students had some important differences (political correctness aside) and that these were a significant part of the education of the students. As the age of the students starting at Hogwarts coincided roughly with the onset of puberty (at least with some of the girls, boys hitting their growth later and maturity much later still), portions of the Charms and Transfiguration courses were combined, and then split into two groups with the girls taught by a female professor and the boys taught by Professor Flitwick.

The girls' class was sometimes taught by Minerva McGonagall, sometimes by Charity Burbage (the elderly witch who taught Muggle Studies), and sometimes by Rolanda Hooch (the flying instructor, being as close to a P.E. teacher as Hogwarts had on staff). As puberty could be almost considered a magical as well as physical transformation, Professor McGonagall's presence made sense to the girls, as did Madame Hooch's.

Professor Burbage's class sessions were considered a joke, as the elderly witch's concepts of fashion and of feminine hygiene dated from well before the invention of the brassiere and the tampon – after these classes, the girls (who were less impressed with their pureblood status) got together with more senior classmates who had dealings in the muggle world (and more importantly, had access to muggle fashion magazines and "ladies' supplies"). One consequence of this divergence of social views was that while the girls in other houses had rather fashionable lingerie (and more comfortable and workable "other things"), the girls in Slytherin house tended to be attired in underwear jokingly referred to (by other houses) as being from the "Queen Victoria's Secret" catalogue.

Professor McGonagall has kept up with outside influences and trends much better than her more elderly colleague, which among other reasons was why she was the person tasked with contacting non-magical parents of magical children to explain the invitation to attend Hogwarts. Her own Mastery degrees in Charms and Transfiguration allowed teaching such things as the transfiguration of various materials into emergency supplies, and incantations to relieve cramps. Other useful charms dealt with transfiguration of clothing to adjust to changing body proportions (particularly for the muggleborn students who had not learned such matters at their mothers' knee).

One set of charms which were thought critical for the girls to learn (given magically enhanced sex drives, and the entropic effects associated with them) dealt with contraception and fertility (the latter only taught to more senior students, or those whose home cultures required marriage at young ages with subsequent and rapid production of heirs). One important charm taught to the girls was the "Impotentis" hex, to prevent harassment by boys who wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

There were more powerful versions of this hex, taught to senior girls, or to younger (usually very early developing) classmates where the unwanted attentions were repetitive and growing more violent – there were cases where boys from "Ancient and Noble" houses believed that the "Right of the Lord" extended to their female classmates, and who subsequently (post-hex) found that they were unable to produce heirs, mechanically, physically or genetically. These cases were rumoured (although it was never proven) to have been assisted by senior staff members who were relatively immune from threats of retaliation by irate politically-powerful relatives. Some staff were disgusted with the attitudes of complete entitlement, and sometimes felt that some "culling" of that particular herd was in order. The affected "houses" generally took the sudden, and not entirely unexpected (in most cases), appearance of a "barren branch" of the family tree with resignation, as it was preferable to having a young member of the clan hauled up before the Wizengamot on charges of rape, backed by respected members of the Hogwarts staff, some of whom were themselves also highly placed members of the court.

In the boys classes, the diminutive professor taught such useful charms as the suppression of unwanted spontaneous erections (which almost always occurred at the most inopportune moments, such as when reading aloud to a class), and cleaning spells after particularly vivid dreams. The Weasley twins figured out a counter-spell to the suppression charms, and in fact developed a reversal charm (later marketed through their Wheezes company as Weasleys' Wizarding Wiagra) – these, they of course tested out on their little brother.

In the latter half of sixth year, the senior charms classes dealt with more direct control of the sexual drives and appetites, as well as the linking of the sexual forces with other natural elemental aspects of weather, and the manipulation of water and light. These studies were combined with the Ancient Runes program, and many of the charms and incantations were required to be performed in the nude.

Again the classes were split by gender, at least until the two sexes were sufficiently comfortable with their own nudity to be exposed (as it were) to that of the other polarity of humanity (without, again, turning into drooling idiots). By this point in the development of the adolescent sex drives, the drooling idiot status was not limited to the boys. In seventh year, the classes were mixed, and any residual embarrassment was considered the problem of the individual student.

It had been found that, at least in the early stages of these studies, it was wiser to have the girls taught by an older female teacher, who could impress upon them a mature approach and comfort level, and to eliminate what had been found to be the embarrassing fact (at least to the younger girls) that Professor Flitwick's abbreviated stature caused his eye level to be roughly the same as their crotches. The teachers were also skyclad for these classes, and the evident comfort that the instructors had with their natural state helped the students to get over their initial modesty. For an introductory period, to have students get more comfortable with their state of their undress, the first couple weeks of these classes only required students to disrobe to their underwear; as these classes were held after Christmas, this allowed the girls to show off their "holiday presents", which also helped break the ice. This was also the point in their education that most of the girls discovered what a wicked sense of humour Minerva McGonagall had.

It was also found that the boys (at the DI stage) were better able to attend astronomy or flying lessons without being completely consumed by the phallic appearances of telescopes and broomsticks.


	10. The Suggestion

**T&A in the DA**

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Author's Notes:** I know that the official chronology says that the initial organizing meeting of the DA was October 5th, but the October 5th 1995 was a Thursday.

Sorry about the dismal tone of this chapter, but it is impossible to talk about the mission of the DA, and the nature of their enemies, without talking about some nasty stuff.}

**The "Suggestion"**

On the first Saturday of October 1995, at the instigation of Hermione Granger, a gathering of students was held at the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade to form a "study group" dedicated to practicing "Defence Against the Dark Arts" (DADA). The following Tuesday, the selected (and willing) students met in the Room of Requirement to figure out how they were going to make it work. The students were advised to wear clothes that they could stretch and bend in, as some of the spells were going to involve vigorous movement.

The meeting started with Harry Potter, Hermione, and Ron Weasley standing up in front of the group and laying out what they hoped to accomplish. This was essentially gaining practical experience in defence. Harry, having by far the most experience in these matters (although not by personal choice) would be the primary instructor, but Hermione (as the know-it-all mistress of spells, charms, and whatever other topic was likely to come up) would assist, while Ron basically provided moral support.

The meeting started out with a severe reality check.

First off, Harry asked "How many of you know the 'Expelliarmus' hex"? All held up their hands. He then asked "How many can do the 'Stupeify' hex"? Again, all hands but one.

"When did you learn them"?

Hannah Abbott replied "We learned the 'expelliarmus' in first year, and the 'stupefy' in third year".

Harry then asked "What do you do when you are hit with a 'stupefy' or lose your wand with an 'expelliamus'? Dennis, what do you do?" This last was directed to Dennis Creevey who was the youngest student, being in second year (and the one who had not known the "Stupefy"). He replied "The professor stops the duel and you pick up your wand, or he wakes you up".

Harry scowled. "Well people, the ones we're learning to face aren't going to give you back your wand, and they don't want you to wake up. Ever! They are nasty, vicious, mean and deadly", and then, to try lighten things up a bit "and some of them have bad breath too!"

The gathering gave a bit of a nervous laugh, as the horrible truth stated to sink in that this group wasn't just to pass exams or get around an obnoxious teacher. Harry and the others were deadly serious. Their enemies were going to try to kill them.

Harry continued "So what are you going to do when you are disarmed or stunned by spells every third year student is familiar with? I can assure you that Voldemort's bunch know these and more. So what are you going to do?"

Neville spoke up "I guess you could fight them, like with your fists", remembering how he tried to stop the trio at the end of first year.

"Good, Neville. Okay, does anybody here know any kind of unarmed fighting?"

Fred Weasley piped up "Does hitting someone with a bludger count?"

Harry smiled "Good one, Fred! Absolutely! Anything where you can throw something, or hit them with, can work. If you don't injure them, at least you can distract them. This brings up another point – if we can work as a team, one can distract your attacker while another counter-attacks with spells or other weapons. In quidditch, we learn to work together to attack, evade and get the job done. Good point, Fred. Anyone else?"

Seamus Finnegan spoke up "My granddad taught me some things his dad learned in the First World War, and during the Easter Rising. My dad showed me some other stuff he learned in 'The Troubles'. Some of it pretty nasty. Is that what you have in mind?"

Harry replied "Did you learn any hand-to-hand combat, or group stuff?" Seamus answered "Both". Harry responded "Great, that's what we need".

Hermione put up her hand "I have taken karate classes and I can teach people some of the moves." From planning this meeting out with Harry and Ron, she knew this topic was going to come up, and had worn exercise slacks.

Zacharias Smith demanded "What is this carroty stuff? Is it some muggle song-and-dance trickery?" He had been talking to Lavender Brown, who as one of Hermione's dorm-mates had watched Hermione's exercises with increasing boredom over the years.

Fred piped up again, pointing at his hair "I think us Weasleys have the _carroty_ thing down pretty well already". The room laughed.

Hermione started to give a historical lecture – "Karate means 'empty hand' in Japanese. Farmers were forbidden by the ruling classes from having weapons, and so they used their hands and feet, and farm tools, as weapons." Harry said, "Can you show us what you mean?" Hermione said "Sure".

As they had planned this out before hand, Harry and Hermione had prepared a bit of a demonstration, and so Hermione had limbered up before the meeting started. Hermione said "Harry, hold your hand out about face height", which Harry did. Her spinning back-roundhouse kick hit Harry's hand with a sharp and very loud "whack". Harry clutched his hand in his other, and exclaimed "Ouch, you didn't have to hit me so hard!"

Most of the group were stunned by how Hermione had swung her leg higher than her head, and how hard she had hit Harry's hand. Marietta Edgecombe, who had worn a short pleated skirt to the meeting, figuring this gave her legs plenty of freedom of movement, was stunned by Hermione's position during the kick.

Marietta was one of Cho Chang's group of "giggling girlfriends". For all her awareness of the opposite sex, she was rather naive, and a bit prudish. She was one of those girls who didn't realize that behaviour that may have been cute when she was seven years old just made her look stupid at sixteen. Since she was six, even in the shower, she worried that someone might be watching, or that she shouldn't be thinking the thoughts she was thinking. As a redeeming feature, Marietta did have a good sense of self-deprecating humour, and often (but not always) recognized her short-comings as things to be overcome.

She blushed vividly and gasped "I couldn't do that – they would be able to see my knickers!"

Hermione looked at Marietta with a bit of disgust, "If you connect to their jaw or the side of their head, they won't see much or remember it".

George Weasley piped up "Marietta, you normally wear skirts so short that when you bend over to pick up that quill that you keep dropping in class, everybody can see your knickers anyway. Better idea - just don't wear any knickers. That way, when you're attacked, no knickers to see. That would solve the problem."

His twin brother joined in, "In that case, they would be so stunned at the view, they won't remember to duck". Some laughed. Marietta hated Fred Weasley.

Harry, being still a bit slow in the socially aware department, laughed along, and said "That would be a definite distraction – might work". As she was a blonde, Marietta blushed so hard that her face looked like a beet.

Alicia Spinnet, who was in her seventh year at Hogwarts, was sitting with Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson (both in sixth year). She saw how Marietta was virtually paralyzed by the thought that someone might attack her while she was inadequately dressed, and might see her "southern regions" when she wasn't herself in charge of the viewing. Alicia leaned in towards her quidditch colleagues, "Girls, we've got a serious problem here."

Alicia, Katie and Angelina leaned together. Alicia said, "You two know about the nude classes in second term, right?" Katie and Angelina nodded. Alicia continued "We've all taken showers together after games and practices, and sometime even showered with the boys". Katie remarked "Just good clean fun!" The others chuckled.

Alicia thought for a moment, and then stood up, causing Harry to unexpectedly pause in his introduction. She said "Can the girls stay for a bit after the meeting? I have an idea I think might help, that I want to discuss. Girls only". The rest of the group looked puzzled, and Hermione looked a bit out of sorts – this hadn't been something that she planned to have happen, and she didn't have a clue what it was about. Given the seriousness of the task at hand, and her bossy nature, she didn't like being uninformed of what was going on.

After the main part of the meeting was over, and the trio had had a short discussion as to how the meeting had gone, the boys left (Ron and some others going to find some food). The girls gathered around Alicia.

Alicia spoke "I really hate to do this, girls, but we need a bit of a reality check. Why are we here? Marietta?"

Marietta said "Aren't we here to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts because Professor Umbridge won't teach us anything?"

Alicia spoke again "Not really! How many of you believe Harry Potter, when he tells you that he faced the guy whose name we are all too afraid to say?" All put up their hands, although some were a bit hesitant. Alicia continued, "Alright then. We agree that we can trust that Harry is telling the truth about what happened last year. Right?" All nodded.

Alicia spoke again in a somewhat harsher tone, "Okay. We are here because this guy, who has scared the pants off us since we were children, murdered Cedric Diggory. We are here because Harry is the only person who has ever faced him and survived. We are here because this guy wants to take over our world and we have to know how Harry defeated him and survived, and we have to learn how to do it too. We have to know how to fight him, anywhere, anytime, in any condition, and regardless of what we are wearing or not wearing when it happens." She looked sharply at Marietta. In a gentler tone, she continued, "Marietta, I know you're scared. I'm scared. We're all pissing-our-pants scared. THAT's why we're here."

"We need to be able to help each other. Like Harry said, we need to work as a team, helping each other fight, or defending each other. And we have to be able to trust each other to do the same for us as we are doing for them. I know you are uncomfortable in the idea of having to be ready to fight in your school robes, in your underwear (Marietta blushed again), or starkers!" Several girls blushed at this.

Susan Bones spoke up, "If you consider what happened the first time what's-his-name tried to take over, before Harry somehow defeated him as a baby, the best you could hope for, if you fought him, was to be killed. My aunt says that 'He-who cannot-blah-blah-blah' always killed, but his followers tortured and raped, sometime both at the same time! If we don't win, we can all expect something along those lines."

Ginny's perverse sense of humour came to the fore, and she piped in "You mean we're really here to learn Defence Against the Dark 'Parts'?"

Some girls grinned slightly and nervously, until Angelina broke the ice "Hey, watch it, Red!" She then put on a phoney thick African accent , "Some of us good guys got da dahk pahts too, you know!" at which the Patil twins and Alicia all yelled "Yeah, watch that!" To a degree, this broke the tension.

Alicia spoke again, in a softer tone. "I have an idea which I think will help. We need to learn to trust each other, and to be completely comfortable with each other, because if it comes to it, we will be fighting for our lives together. It may happen in the Great Hall, it may happen at the Quidditch Pitch, or it may happen in our dorm bathrooms. We have to be ready to stand together."

"By now, you've all have heard about the Advanced Charms, Runes and Transfiguration classes. I am suggesting that we do something similar to the way the classes work to make students comfortable with being undressed, by having the students split into boys' and girls' groups, and work on their spells while gradually having less and less on. I have been through the first part of the courses, and I know that when you are focussing on complex spells, you forget about the fact that you're only wearing your skin."

Katie grinned and said "Talk about revealing your 'Charms'". Again, the group laughed. "Okay, Alicia, what's your idea?"

"I suggest that we get together, here in the Room of Requirement, this weekend for a party. Just us girls. We'll get some food, some butterbeer, maybe some Firewhiskey or other stuff. Get the Ravenclaw phonograph and have some music. Just get together for a couple hours. But completely undressed."

Cho Chang complained, on behalf of the giggling girls, "Isn't that going to be kind of sexy? How can we be comfortable with that?"

Alicia looked at her quidditch rival and said "Nothing sexy about it. It's like if you were swimming, or taking a shower after a game of quidditch. Sex has nothing to do with it, and the idea is just to get comfortable being undressed together."

"Why not be sexy?" came a remark from a very unexpected corner. Luna Lovegood. "What's wrong with sexy?" She paused, looking around at all the girls. Her next statement forever changed the understanding that the other girls had of Luna. "We all have wombs. How many of us expect to have children?" Almost everyone put up their hands, looking puzzled.

Luna continued, "If we're going to be fighting for our lives, let's be aware that we're fighting for all aspects of our lives. If I understand it, Harry lived because his mother loved him. She conceived him, she bore him, she loved him and she died for him. Let's fight for _all_ parts of our lives!"

Stunned silence.

Ginny Weasley spoke up. "Luna's right! Let's make this a real party, lots of food and drink, and some sexy entertainment".

"What do you mean by sexy entertainment?" asked Hermione, rather grumpily, and somewhat puzzled by the suggestion (although she had an unsettling feeling of where Ginny's idea was headed).

"I don't know, maybe as we are getting undressed, someone could do it as a show, like with music. I think they call it a striptease."

Stunned silence again. Some of the girls knew about this muggle "art-form", but many didn't.

Luna spoke up "Striptease? How does it work?"

Ginny thought about how to explain it for a minute. "A woman comes out on stage, dressed up fancy. As the music plays, she takes off her clothes bit by bit, in a sexy way, and ends up completely naked."

Luna smiled and spoke up "That sounds like fun. I'll do it."

Alicia spoke up "I guess this was my idea, so I guess I should take the consequences. I'm in too". The group chuckled.

Marietta added "I'm in too". More stunned looks. Alicia said "If you're not comfortable with it, why?" Marietta looked thoughtful, and said "You all are doing this to help me get comfortable. The least I can do is to join in too." Alicia responded "Only if you really want to". Marietta was a bit put out that Alicia felt that she needed help. She looked even more thoughtful and a bit worried, but nodded.

Hannah Abbott spoke up, with a bit of a wicked smile "You Gryffindors and Ravenclaws can't have all the fun. I think we need a little Hufflepuff loyalty to the cause, and as no other Puffies (looking at Susan Bones, with a smile and a phoney scowl on her face) are volunteering, I'll do it"

Lavender Brown choked "Puffies!"

Hannah laughed. "Sure. What nickname do you have for your housemates? Puffies is how we refer to each other", and with a slight smile, "particularly at _that_ time of the month", she giggled.

General laughter.

Alicia commented "Well, at least that shouldn't be a problem. I think we're pretty much all locked-on by now".

{A/N: The so-called 'dormitory effect" of menstrual synchronization was documented by Dr Martha McClintock in the journal _Nature_ in 1971}.

Nervous giggles again. Alicia raised her voice "Okay, we've got four. Any more?"

Ginny said "Me too." Again, stunned silence – This was continuing to be a side of Ginny Weasley that most of the other girls had never seen.

To everyone's further stunned surprise, Hermione said "Me too!" This was getting completely out of her control, and she had to be part of it or get left behind. That was just not acceptable, in spite of how uncomfortable she was with the whole thing!

It was generally agreed that six performances should be enough, Katie and Angelina were put in charge of making the arrangements (phonograph from Ravenclaw, food and drink from the house elves, booze from various suppliers, etc). The Room Of Requirement, as always, could be depended upon to provide chairs, tables, staging, lighting and sufficient fireplaces so nobody got cold.

Katie raised her voice so all the girls still in the room could hear "Remember to wear your prettiest undies. That way, we all get to put on a bit of a show as we get our kits off." This was greeted with much snickering.

At the end of the gathering as the girls were ready to leave, Katie, Angelina and the "performers" got together to discuss the logistics. It was agreed that each of the girls doing the strip would decide on their own music, costumes, etc, and either use some of the music in the Ravenclaw's collection, or provide discs of their own.

Marietta asked "What exactly do we have to do?"

Ginny, who still surprised the rest by appearing to be the most knowledgeable about the topic, suggested, "How about we each pick a theme or story, find music that matches, and then act it out, as we undress. Either that, or just dance. I think that should work. What do you think?"

Hermione asked "How long do we have to dance?", being still rather shocked that she had actually volunteered, but determined that she was going to be part of it, even if she wasn't leading it. Ginny thought about the things she had read (surreptitiously of course) and said "One or two songs worth, maybe three minutes or so?" The rest shrugged "Sounds okay".

Still worried at the thought of undressing in front of a crowd, Marietta blushed, and said "What about the other girls? I thought the idea was that everybody got naked".

Angelina nodded, "Good point." She raised her voice so the rest of the girls could hear. "How about when people first get here, we peel down to our underwear. As Katie suggested, everybody wear their 'pretties', or whatever they like. We chat and eat and drink for a bit to get relaxed for a while, then someone puts on the first show. Then everyone strips down completely, and mixes some more to get more relaxed, then the rest of the shows. How does that sound?" There was general agreement, and those not scheduled to dance started leaving.

Marietta asked, "When do I have to go on?" She looked increasingly nervous about the process (causing the older Gryffindors to look at each other and silently agree that the group might have some problems with this one in the future).

Alicia spoke up, "How about I go first. I came up with this crazy idea, and it seems to be getting nuttier by the minute." The others chuckled. Alicia continued, "How about Marietta goes next, just after everyone else strips down – they say one way to get over nervousness when public speaking is to imagine your audience naked. They would have just got naked, and might be feeling a little nervous themselves. Do you think that will work?" Marietta nodded, but obviously still a bit reticent.

Hermione said "What about us?" Ginny's Weasley sense of humour came to the fore, "How about you old ladies go first, then us spring chicks (gesturing to herself and Luna) will show you how it's done?" The others didn't seem to think much of that, so she shrugged, "Alphabetical order?" Hermione (even the pedant) asked "First or last name?" Ginny said, "I don't know. First?"

Hannah, Hermione and Luna agreed, and the schedule was set. Angelina said "Okay, that all sounds like a plan. Get your music to me by noon on Saturday, and we get together at around 7".

All headed back to their dorms.

Unbeknownst to the girls, the Weasley twins had left a recording device in the room when they left. They were very suspicious when it became apparent that the girls were up to something that excluded the boys. Somehow, this had to be going to be good. If they couldn't be part of it, they had to at least find out what "it" was. After the girls had left, Freed snuck back into the Room. When he and George looked at the recording, they were delighted at the prospects, but totally shocked that their little sister had been the one to come up with the idea for the show (after all, in their perception, their magazine collection, which in their opinions Ginny could not possibly have found out about, could not possibly be related to this bizarre mental aberration of their pure, innocent sister. If nothing else, their mother was never going to hear about it, at least not from them.


	11. Saturday Night: Girls' Night In

**T&A in the DA**

**Rating: M **(I promised the rating was for two chapters. This is one)

**Warning: **Recreational nudity, auto-sexual acts

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily (damn, I could use the cash) or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

Further, I also have no connection with Joss Whedon or any rights to his creations. I only use one quote (or as close as I remember), as it is one of the best distillations of what passes for the 'mind' of an adolescent male that I have ever seen.

**Author's Note**

As part of full disclosure, I have to point out I am an adult male, so my understanding of the teenage female mind is speculative at best.

**Saturday Evening: Girls' Night "In"**

That Saturday evening (October 14th, if you care), a couple of the Ravenclaw girls arrived at the Room of Requirement carrying the phonograph (actually walking beside levitated machine), and a collection of records of various kinds of party music for all occasions. The cost had been two cases of butter-beer and two bottles of Barbados rum, delivered to the Ravenclaw common room while the prefects were "busy" elsewhere (as Padma Patil was one of the Ravenclaw prefects and was in on the plan, this extra-legal transaction went off without a hitch).

The previous few evenings, the "artistes" as someone dubbed them as the Tuesday night gathering was breaking up, were trying to figure out what they had gotten themselves into, and exactly what they were going to (publicly) get themselves out of, and how. Questions needed to be answered concerning costumes, music, choreography, and staging.

That week Luna could be generally found wandering the halls with an even more than usual spaced-out look on her face, humming to herself, and occasionally shifting herself in what looked like dance moves. Most of those who saw her just figured that this was just business-as-usual with Luna.

As might be expected, Hermione got down to some serious research. This was a bit problematic, as Hogwarts library had very little information on the topic in question. Harry and Ron were curious about what she was reading so intently (and why she was blushing so fiercely as she read – that didn't usually happen), but she told them it as a personal project and to go away, far away, which of course made them even more curious. It rapidly became apparent to her that one principal feature of the music, seeming necessary for at least the more classic form of this type of endeavour, was a strong rhythmic component (there were exceptions to this rule, for a more "artistic" style, but these were less common). Emma Granger was curious why Hermione had sent an urgent request for an old 45 RPM record that she and Dan had listened to while Hermione was growing up. Her karate kata practices took on a more "rhythmic" quality.

Ginny, Alicia, Hannah and Marietta could be found either pouring over fashion magazines or looking through Ravenclaw's record collection to find suitable music.

A number of the house elves skilled in clothing alterations were recruited to make some unusual modifications to more typical clothing, and to make up one or two items not easily put together from existing items of clothing.

On the evening in question, Kate and Angelina got to The Room early to set up. With her skills as a Chaser in looking out for sneaky bludgers, Katie soon found the video camera (3-D wizarding version of course) hidden in a corner. She and Angelina laughed and were going to disable it, but then looked at each other, smirked, and moved it into a location with a better view after changing the settings so that they would get multiple copies of the recordings (leaving only one for the twins, and adjusting the settings so that it would appear that only one copy was made). Great blackmail material, one way or another.

As it read their minds for what was required, the Room had arranged large fireplaces along the sides of the room, with refreshment tables at the rear and a stage at the front. Racks of spotlights were arranged on the ceiling, which were charmed to track the performers as they danced. The Room would determine the stage decorations according to the thoughts of each dancer.

Angelina worked with the elves setting up the refreshment tables, with coolers of iced tea, carbonated beverages of various flavours, pumpkin juice, and butterbeer, while bottles of Firewhiskey, rum, and some of Luna's famous "Ravenclaw's Rapture" pumpkin pie wine (made from pumpkin juice and spices appropriated from the school supplies) were set near a stack of glasses.

_(A/N: There seems to be a near infinite supply of pumpkins in Scotland from the amount of pumpkin juice which gets consumed.)_

As the girls arrived, they removed their outer clothing or school robes. It became apparent that there were two general schools of thought on the style of underwear to be worn. There was the Dorothy Parker principle ("Brevity is the soul of lingerie"), and the Hitchcock principle (It is not what is shown, but what is imagined). Then there was Luna's perpetual "Is it pretty?" theory. Most of the girls' underthings used fabrics which were either inherently magical or had been enchanted, so the colours and patterns shifted and morphed as time went on.

Luna herself arrived wearing her school robes/academic gown. When she removed it, she had no "street" clothes on underneath it, but only a black silk teddy, with stars glowing on it, and aurora borealis (northern lights) shimmering and dancing across the dark material.

Susan Bones showed up in a very plain white blouse and pleated skirt, but when she removed them, the buxom strawberry-blond wore a satin bustier which matched her hair, with a tiny matching panty. She had her long hair unbraided for a change, so it cascaded over her bare shoulders.

Angelina Spinnet came to the party in a shirt and blue jeans, peeling down to a coffee-and-cream bra-and-knicker set which set off her dark skin well.

The younger Gryffindor girls arrived together. Lavender took off her blouse and jeans to reveal her lavender coloured teddy, while Ginny got rid of her skirt and T-shirt to stand in her metallic green bra and pants, wearing matching stockings.

Parvati had come in a sari. She handed the other girls one end of the fabric, and ordered "Hang on and spin me". As they pulled on the long length of embroidered silk, Parvati spun as she was unwrapped, leaving her in a scarlet bra and knickers, which were beautifully embroidered with gold thread – at their questioning stares, she said "Well, I had to show some house loyalty by wearing Gryffindor colours, didn't I".

Hermione Granger arrived in her school uniform blouse and skirt, carrying her dancing costume in a bag which she hid at the corner of the stage. The rest of the girls gasped as she then stripped down to a periwinkle lace bra and thong which concealed very little (making it quite apparent that bushy hair was not confined to her scalp). She said, "Well, if I'm going to do 'sexy', I'm going to go whole-hog", which the others agreed just made sense given Hermione's all-or-nothing character. She had had Lavender help with her make-up, and as Parvati commented, was all 'tarted-up'; she felt like she looked good, and that feeling made her happy.

Parvati looked at Lavender and Hermione standing next to each other, and remarked about their undies "My gods, you must know those colours clash really badly". The three couldn't understand why Ginny sat down to keep from falling over, laughing loudly. At their questioning looks, she gasped "Okay, I'll explain."

Ginny told the girls of Fred and George's magazine collection, and how she had looked at the animated pictures of pairs of wizards and witches, or sometimes two witches, as they touched each other all over their bodies. Ginny said "Sometimes, he would handle her, then she would handle him, or they would handle each other at the same time. Anyway, sometimes the pictures would show a witch slowly and seductively taking off her robes, which is where I got the idea for the striptease."

Katie and Angelina whispered to each other that this information would be useful blackmail material for dealing with their boyfriends.

"When I was about ten, I tried doing a striptease dance in my room, and I wore scarlet knickers and a scarlet bra (which really didn't have anything much to cover or support at the time)." The other girls giggled at their own memories of that time in their lives, as the interest in their maturing bodies exceeded the rate that their bodies were keeping up. Ginny continued "Mum came in and told me that the colour of my underwear clashed really badly with my hair. Parvati just said the same thing about Hermione and Lavender's undies."

Hermione looked shocked and asked "Your mother didn't stop you?" Ginny shrugged "No, why should she? It was only me in my room, and when I get married, I'll be taking off my clothes in front of my husband. Boys like to see girls undress – you've played 'Healer', haven't you?" Hermione blushed and said "Well, I played the muggle version when I was little, but I thought it was something I wasn't supposed to do. My mum is pretty modest." Ginny giggled and said "Not my mum!" The two girls looked at each other and laughed.

Most other girls wore variations on the bra-and-knicker set, or teddies, usually in satin or silk, many with a lot of lace. Rainbow colours were popular, and shifting patterns were the norm. Ginny, being one of the youngest, played it up by having bunnies hopping around on her green panties (she claimed their ears tickled in interesting places).

Marietta wore a long pale-yellow slip with lace trim, which went very well with her blonde hair, and which was opaque in front but completely transparent behind, showing that she has not wearing a bra or pants. She explained, with a giggle, that she was still getting used to the idea, and decided to use the ostrich theory that if she couldn't see how much she was showing, there was no need to be embarrassed that others could see more.

The girls quickly became comfortable with their state of undress, mostly because it was very much like hanging around in their dormitory rooms in various levels of lingerie. The refreshments helped smooth out any rough edges.

After about a quarter hour, it came time for the first show. Katie got up on stage, and announced "Okay, ladies. Fill up your glasses and take a seat, for an evening of 'T and A at the DA'!" Scattered cheering from all, and puzzled looks from the girls unfamiliar with the muggle term. "First up, Alicia!"

Like most of the other "dancers", Alicia had charmed her clothing to come off in the order of her program.

As the girls sat down to watch, the Room dimmed its lights, except for the lights illuminating a Spanish-village scene as on a sunny day. Chabrier's "España" started to play on the phonograph, with the opening trumpet call catching the attention of the group. Alicia came onto the stage barefoot wearing an embroidered white blouse, with a crimson over-skirt split in the front to show the white base skirt. She wore her dark shoulder length hair loose. She carried a tambourine, which she jingled and tapped as she danced a Spanish-type dance in time to the waltz rhythm. About half-way through the piece, she tossed the tambourine over the heads of the audience, where it turned into a large pink bull with huge horns. She whipped off her over-skirt, which turned into a bullfighter's cape. As the bull charged at her and the cape, using her chaser skills she would twist and turn in time to the music, her hair swirling, so that the bull missed her body; however, each time the bull passed her, its horns would conveniently "catch" a piece of her clothing and tear it away. The first to go was her blouse and underskirt, revealing a pink lace bra and lace pettipants with lots of ruffles on the legs. Next to go was the bra; Alicia swirled the cape to conceal her breasts, but the next time the bull charged, she used the cape to distract it, thereby revealing her bare chest (adding the "tease" factor). The pettipants were next to come off, leaving her pink lace knickers, which soon followed. At each departure of an item of clothing, Alicia used the cape or gestured to cover herself up or otherwise indicate embarrassment, continuing the tease. As she danced, and the music came to a close, she spun the cape over the audience. The bull charged out into the audience, and as the music finished, both the bull and the cape exploded into a shower of pink flower petals.

There was thunderous applause from the entranced group of girls. They milled around the room, chatting, getting more drinks and snacks, and in some cases breathing heavily from the excitement (and arousal) from Alicia's show.

After about another quarter hour, incidentally allowing Marietta time for a couple of glasses of liquid courage (not being a Gryffindor), Angelina (as co-mistress of ceremonies) got up on stage to announce the next phase of the program and the next act. As she got on stage, Ginny started chanting "We want Dark Parts", which the rest of the room joined in on. "We want Dark Parts, We want Dark Parts!" After a moment or so of the chanting, Angelina removed her bra (to wide applause), saying "Okay, it's time for us all to peel down. Bras off!" There was applause, and rustling of silky materials as this instruction was carried out. Angelina twisted back and forth, shimmying and causing her breasts to sway, leading to more applause.

Those wearing teddies had slipped the upper portions down baring their chests, but anticipating further 'group participation', had not completely removed them yet.

The chanting continued from the half-naked girls. Angelina laughed and said, "Yep, it's time to totally doff my duds. But I am not doing it alone! On the count of three, drop 'em!" The girls laughed as Angelina put her hands on the waistband of her pants, and called out "Okay, hands on your knickers? One, two, three!" There was much rustling and giggling as the girls removed their panties, some just slipping them off quickly, some with a wicked smile and wiggling of hips as they slowly and provocatively slid them down, some throwing them into the crowd or onto the stage. By this point, the laughter was unrestrained by any residual embarrassment.

It was now obvious that none of the girls, except for Lavender who was addicted to the muggle fashion magazines that Hermione's mother sent her (in the vain hope that she could do something with her hair), had availed themselves of bikini waxing, Brazilian cuts, or other such "hair styles".

Angelina smiled and laughed, and announced, "All right, you naked bunch of perverts, here's Marietta!" Great applause from the audience.

Marietta walked onto the stage wearing a long green velvet robe, carrying a glass of brown liquid. The Room changed the stage from a Spanish village to a forest scene; the lighting was like the sun coming through a canopy of leaves. Marietta spread a number of teddy bears (borrowed from a number of the girls) around the stage. She raised her glass, and said "I know a lot of you think of me as a little girly-girl, so I figured, what the hell!", as she tossed back her shot of Appleton's OP. She dropped her robe, showing that she was wearing a blue dress with a white pinafore apron and white kneesocks. She looked just like the girl in the film version of Alice in Wonderland.

Most muggles do not realize the Lewis Carroll's books were the ghostwritten travel journals for Alice Liddell's experiences on a field trip during her first year at a wizarding school near Oxford (not Hogwarts - after all with only about 200 to 300 students at Hogwarts, there have to be other schools for the magically gifted), similar to the writings of Rustichello da Pisa recording the tales told to him by Marco Polo of Venice. The animated movie was actually a documentary.

The phonograph started playing the children's song 'Waltzing with Bears' with the name 'Uncle Walter' changed to Marietta, with suitable gender-specific changes to pronouns. The small teddy bears grew to large teddy bears about Marietta's height (although they were much chubbier), who danced with Marietta. As one of the 'baggy' bears waltzed with Marietta, he undid the bow fastening her pinafore, so she reached up and undid the tie at her neck, discarding the pinafore at the end of the song, to the cheers of the crowd.

The music changed to 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic'. The bears looked at Marietta, and remarked "You can't come to the picnic. You not a bear". She replied "Yes I am". The bears looked at her disbelieving, and asked "Where you paws? Where you fur?" Marietta pointed at her feet and said "There are my paws", and at her long blond hair "Here is my fur". The bears looked at her head, and said "That not fur." Four bears lifted her up while a female teddy bear (wearing a teddy herself, just to drive home the point) removed Marietta's shoes and socks, making sure that the audience got a good view up her dress while this was happening.

The bears looked at her feet, and said "Pretty pitiful claws you got there, girl. Where the fur". Marietta said "Just a minute", and peeled off her dress to reveal a little girl's camisole and panties with teddy bears all over them (which were looking up at her and around at the larger bears) and ruffles on the backside. At this point, the audience started chanting "Where's the fur, where's the fur" with the bears joining in. Marietta stripped off her camisole, and one of the 'raggy' bears started caressing her exposed breasts. Marietta started breathing heavily, as she was getting aroused by this touching. She extended her arms in display, as two of the bears gently pulled down her knickers. One of them began caressing her crotch, and she spread her legs slightly to give the large furry paw more room; by this point she was breathing quite hard and quivering from the tactile stimulation. The bears look at her pubic area with approval and said "You do have fur!" As the bears massaged her body, and her breathing was getting very 'raggy', she reached a climax and plush blond fur sprouted all over her naked body, and her fingernails grew into short claws. As the music ended, Marietta spread her arms out and declared in a shaky voice "I'm totally bear!"

The audience broke into loud applause and laughter, and Marietta and the bears left the stage. Many of the girls had unconsciously also started touching themselves and were getting quite aroused as well.

As Marietta left the stage, she felt a bit of a breeze. As each hair follicle had a nerve cell, and the young woman still rather aroused, this breeze felt _very_ nice on her fur, so she decided to keep it for the evening. As she sat down next to Cho, the oriental girl stroked her back, and remarked "You're very soft and plush". Marietta's back tingled with the petting, and she asked Cho to continue, which she did. The sensual experience for her fur being petted was extremely pleasant, and Marietta began moaning with the pleasure (wishing that she could purr) and coming to another orgasm. Other girls around her also began petting her fur, bringing Marietta to another frenzy of pleasure. Somehow, a guy with a hairy back would have been thought repulsive, but Marietta's soft blond fur seemed to attract a lot of curiosity and interest.

Watching from the stage, Katie commented, "Whoa, that's really something. Another round of applause for Marietta!" The audience complied enthusiastically. Cho Chang was amazed at her friend's performance, both on stage, and now off.

Katie announced "Okay, let's bring on Ginny Weasley", and left the stage, which was changing to a tropical jungle scene. Ginny came on, in a long sequined gown of metallic blue and yellow. She had starlight glitter in her hair, which was tied up in a bun at the back of her head. The phonograph started playing "Lullaby of Birdland", which was part of her father's collection of muggle jazz music.

Ginny started swaying to the music, undoing her hair. She had charmed her usually long hair to be knee length. The glitter shone and sparkled like stars. As she moved, her sparkling hair swooped and swirled, and as she spun, it spread into a cone of red hair and starlight. She touched her gown, which came away from her body transformed into a large macaw which flew around the room. Ginny danced in a green and yellow panty with two long scarves of similar colours off the points of her hips, and two small triangular swatches of multi-coloured fabric covering her nipples. She was wearing red lace stockings.

As she danced, the lace stockings dissolved into flocks of robins and finches which darted around the room. As she stroked her breasts and her nipples became erect, the triangles fell off, and changed into two hummingbirds, which sped over to the refreshment table to drink the sweet juices set out there. She continued caressing her breasts with her left hand while her right hand slipped inside her panties. She spun around, and her hair and the scarves became clouds of colour. As the end of the music approached, the scarves on the sides of her knickers changed into wings as the panty changed into the body of a large green and yellow parrot, which joined all the other birds circling the naked girl as she twirled in her cocoon of vivid red hair and stars.

Again, thunderous applause and cheering. Katie leaned over to Angelina and commented, "Angie, I have to say, not very sexy, but it sure was beautiful".

It was Angelina's turn to introduce Hannah. She has had a fair bit to drink by this time and was a bit wobbly going up the stairs to the stage, so her "dark parts" were swaying wildly, to the cheers of the group.

"Okay, all. Hannah has asked me to tell you that her performance is titled 'Love of A Garden'. We all know Hannah's passion for Herbology, so let's hear it for Hannah."

The stage changed to a garden with a lot of rather unhealthy-looking flowers and shrubs, with a sunlight sky with big puffy (Puffie?) clouds. Hannah came on stage carrying a water hose and watering can. She was dressed in a tan T-shirt and shorts with knee-socks and sandals, with a straw hat on her head. The music was "An English Country Garden".

Hannah started by moving around the garden, skipping and swaying lightly to the music, caressing the plants as she examined them, and gently tended the garden. She started watering the trees with the hose, and the trees immediately broke out in large leaves that reflected the spray back onto Hannah, completely soaking her clothes, and as her shirt stuck to her torso, it was apparent that she was not wearing a bra underneath. As the trees bloomed, flowers and vegetables sprung up from the floor, and the room was filled with the smell of apple, daffodils, roses and heliotrope blossoms.

The trees then started producing a large number of big apples and peaches, and the boughs began hanging down looking like the branches would break. Still in time to the music, Hannah checked out the trees, then took off her shirt, and tied it around a couple of the heavily- laden branches to use it as an extra support. As the fruit got bigger and heavier, she shook her head in exasperation, and gracefully (and somewhat sensuously) removed her knee-socks one at a time and used them to tie up the branches as well.

Hannah continued by watering the plants on the ground, which sent up tendrils and vines which reached up to her to caress her and hug her, seemingly in appreciation of the watering. Two long vines reached up and wrapped over her shoulders and her chest, blossoming in front of her breasts, and producing two large strawberries which were held directly in front of her nipples; it was as if her nipples had become strawberries. Two other vines reached up to her shorts, undid the button and zipper, then pulled them down slowly, revealing plain white knickers which were also soaked from the watering and which had become rather transparent. The vines slipped up under the sides of her pants, and then lowered them gently to the ground, showing her strawberry-blond curls.

By this point, her face was quite flushed, and the skin colour was nearly matching her hair colour.

Hannah knelt down in the garden to touch the ground cover plants, and the plants caressed her as well, arousing her so that her nipples became erect and the strawberries extended farther from her body. Some vines crept up to her hips and wrapped around her thighs, while a cucumber started stroking her genitalia.

Ginny leaned over to Luna, and remarked "I'm never going to be able to look a cucumber in the eye again." Luna looked at Ginny, with her typical wide-open eyes and remarked "I don't know, cucumbers can be kind of fun." Ginny gasped at this, then Luna continued with a twinkle in her eye, "Besides, that's not her eye." Ginny choked and sprayed her mouthful of pumpkin juice all over the girls in the row in front of her.

Hannah (as well as most of the girls in the audience) was breathing hard, and began rocking her hips back and forth. From the angle she was sitting, few of the audience could see where the cucumber had gotten to, but Hannah did seem to enjoy where it was. She picked the strawberry from in front of her right breast, massaging her breast with her left hand while she ate the strawberry slowly (ah, the taste of a ripe strawberry) as the juice ran down her chin.

As the music reached its climax, so did Hannah, and several girls in the audience reached theirs as well.

As the lights came up, Hannah stood, somewhat unsteadily, bowed, picked up her discarded clothes and left the stage. Katie (it was her turn), climbed the steps, also rather unsteadily, and put one hand on her throat, and the other on her lower abdomen (which appeared to still be spasming). She said "Thank you, Hannah! We wanted sexy entertainment, and you definitely provided some. Whoa, I have got to pay more attention in Herbology class – what has Sprout been teaching them? Or maybe it's just the Hufflepuff girls getting these special lessons!"

"Now, let's hear it for Hermione!" There was applause from the girls who were not fully occupied in getting their breath back.

Hermione was a bit annoyed at the proceeding. Her research had indicated that a strong percussion was a general requirement for strip-tease music, and the other ladies had had rhythmic music, but nothing with a really strong beat, and yet their performances had been very successful. Faulty research was just not something that Hermione could tolerate!

However, two factors had not been included in her calculations, in part due to the paucity of reference material available to her. One was that it took far less to get males excited at the sight of females undressing than it does women ("I'm a seventeen year old boy. Looking at linoleum makes me think of sex"), but once they were aroused, women could be as rowdy as men. Another was that witches (i.e., women of magical persuasion) were far more sensual than muggle men.

However, she had planned out her performance according to her findings, and was not going to make any changes at this point. If anything, she was going to show them how it was supposed to be done. Being a bossy know-it-all had its drawbacks. She shook her hair back, and proceeded onto the stage.

Hermione had brushed her long bushy hair until it shone, and then added some of Ginny's hair-sparkle to it. She was dressed in a long black strapless gown, slit up the left leg to mid-thigh. This showed the top of her lace stocking and one of her garters. A number of the girls from wizarding families were a bit puzzled by the view as they had never seen a garter belt before (stockings in the magical world were generally held up by skin-to-fabric affinity charms). However, those girls with access to muggle fashion magazines were, of course, better informed on these matters. She wore black patent leather high heel pumps.

The Room had changed the setting to a plain stage with a couple of drapes at the back.

The song 'Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress' began playing. Hermione stood still during the opening guitar solo, and on the sharp drum beats thrust her hips first to one side, then the other. As the music became more continuous, she began to dance vigorously, with a lot of hip movement and leg extensions showing off her stockings. Sometimes she would whirl around and sometimes pause in one spot from some bumps and grinds. After a short time into her dance, she turned her back to the audience, and reached back to her zipper, slowly pulling it down to below her pantyline, revealing the back of her knickers and garter belt – she was wearing no bra. She turned to face the audience, loosening her gown, while holding the top of it to her chest. She let the gown down, blushing and revealing her bare breasts, then stepping out of the dress. She twirled, holding the gown out at arm's length and then dropping it to the stage, leaving her clad in periwinkle bikini pants and her stockings.

Still dancing to the strong beat of the music, Hermione's breasts were bouncing and swaying, to the delight of the rest of the girls. She turned away from the audience again, and taking the top seam of her purplish knickers, folded them down to under her buttocks (her garter belt was worn inside the pants). She then turned to the audience, showing that the front of her lowered pants were, provocatively, just above her bushy hairline. She teasingly flipped the front of her knickers down and up a couple of times. She then turned away again, and rhythmically swaying her hips and with straight legs (with her bushy hair and her swaying breasts visible behind her very shapely bottom), lowered her panties over her stockings to the ground, and stepped out of them (still in the high heels). She turned to face the crowd again, whirling her knickers over her head, and then tossing them into the crowd.

She bent over, and undid the garters on her right stocking. While standing with her legs straight (kata practice had made her quite flexible), she rolled the stocking down, then slipping her foot out of her shoe, and lifting her foot out sideways, pulled on the toe of her stocking as it slid off her leg. She held the stocking out at arm's length, and then drew it across her breasts before dropping it to the stage as she slipped her foot back into her shoe. She took off her left stocking in similar fashion, looping it between her legs and drawing it back and forth a few times before dropping it to the floor.

Hermione continued twirling, with her garters spinning around her, and then she reached to the back to the clasp of her lace garter belt, releasing it, and throwing it into the audience as the song ended. As the girls applauded wildly at this unexpected side of Hermione, she blushed, and did a little curtsy (which looked quite erotic when done naked in high heels), and skipped off stage.

As the girls applauded, Angelina resumed the stage. She commented, "You lot might not have noticed, being 'otherwise occupied' with your hands, but Hermione used no actual magic during her performance; that was all just our Hermione. I thought it was pretty magical though."

"For our last performer of the night, here's Luna"

The room darkened as the stage changed to a starlit forest scene of white birches. The scene clouded over, as a thunderstorm began with intense lightning and thunder. Donner's Cloud-gathering song from 'Das Rheingold' began (old family connection). In the midst of the flashes of light, a whirlwind ran onto the stage twirling and leaping. Luna was still wearing the black silk teddy, but instead of stars and northern lights, it reflected the flashing lightning.

As a lightning bolt flashed across the stage and as the thunder rolled, Luna reached up and grabbed it. She held it to her chest, and seemed to absorb the beam of light. Another flashed and struck her, and her teddy exploded away from her now nude body, which seemed to be glowing faintly. Another lightning bolt flashed which Luna grabbed, again holding it to her chest, massaging it into her bare breasts. The glow from her body increased with her breasts glowing more than the rest of her torso, and her long blond hair extended from her head like a cloud, as if she had taken on a huge static charge.

A huge bolt of lightning shot across the stage horizontally, and, Luna leapt on top of it in 'splits' position. She floated, supported on the beam of light for a moment as the tension in the music built up. She grabbed the bolt of lightning, folded it between her legs, and seemed to thrust it up inside herself, withdrawing and inserting, speeding up with the music, and then she seemed to draw the lightning into her body through her centre as Donner's hammer-blow struck in the music and Luna's body stiffened. At this point, the intense glow from her charged body was illuminating the darkened room.

The music indicted that the clouds were breaking, and the Rainbow Bridge (Bifrost) was appearing, Luna's body was glowing in all the colours of the rainbow, which shifted and flowed. The thunderstorm had ended, and the clouds broke, showing the forest in bright moonlight. The Wagner ceased, and Debussy's 'Claire de Lune' began playing.

Luna spun, waving her arms in circles, and a shimmering multi-coloured cloud formed around her nude glowing body. The cloud moved around the stage, thinning near the top to reveal Luna's face and long blond hair floating around her face like a halo. In the bluish moonlight her hair seemed to be liquid silver. The cloud parted, but did not dissipate, showing that Luna was wearing a long shear gown – in the light it was impossible to say whether the gown was white or a pale blue. As Luna danced, the gown evaporated, as it too was made from the cloud. She remained in a bra and half-slip of the same colour. With the cloud, the colours and the music flowing around the dancing young woman, she slowly lowered the slip to the floor, revealing brief bikini panties of a similar amorphous material. With the shifting nebulosity, Luna's underwear seemed almost more part of the cloud than of a separate fabric.

As the cloud swirled around the young woman danced, the bra and knickers had evaporated into tiny wisps of cloud, becoming part of the main cloud seemingly with no effort or gesture on Luna's part. Luna danced with the cloud, stirring it with her arms and swirling it around her nude body. As the music ended, the cloud completely dissipated, leaving Luna standing calmly in the moonlight, calmly smiling and glowing slightly.

Where Hermione did magic, almost in a mechanical fashion or by recipe, it was obvious that Luna simply was magic.

As the applause and cheering died down, Katie and Angelina stood at the front of the group.

Katie announced "Thank you all for coming" (to snickers from a number in the audience). "I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. I know I did! As you can see, the Room has provided some showers and towels, for those of us, and I do mean us, who may need to shower off before we get dressed again. It's been fun, and if and when we do this again, I will be one of the dancers. Good night, and out of my way. I need to hose myself off."

Marietta headed for a shower, and as she had her bath, washing off the rather sweaty fur, Cho remarked "You realize of course that you're shedding." All the girls around them joined in the laughter.


	12. Epilogue

**T&A in the DA**

**Rating: M **(this is the other)

**Warning:** Auto-sexual acts

**Disclaimer:** I did not create the characters or locations, which belong to JK Rowling and her associates. I gain nothing from this effort, either monetarily or other, except the enjoyment. She built the playground, and I am just playing on the swing set.

**Epilogue**

As Katie and Angelina "adjusted" the recording device the twins left, the younger Gryffindor girls returned to their dorm. As they entered the common room, the boys stared at them. Neville looked at Ginny and asked "What have you all been up to? Your cheeks are flushed all red."

Ginny leaned over to Hermione and whispered "He doesn't know that my cheeks are all red, at both ends!"

The boys didn't understand why the two rather drunk girls convulsed in laughter, and had to sit down holding their sides. After a moment, Hermione looked at Ginny, smiled and then said to the boys, "We'll explain later, ... or maybe not", and laughing still louder, the ladies headed up to their dormitory rooms.

Similar scenes took place in the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw common room.

Word got around to the males of the DA that something strange and perhaps wonderful had happened (most had been quite suspicious of what the girls had planned, after they had kicked the boys out of the meeting earlier in the week). The boys got together the next afternoon to talk about it, and confirmed that all the female members of the DA had disappeared the evening before, and had returned to their houses late in the evening, all looking flushed, many very drunk, and laughing a lot. None of the girls would say where they had been or what they had been doing, but would look at the other girls of their house and break out in renewed laughter.

The Sunday morning after the party, Fred and George retrieved their recorder. As they watched in the privacy of their dorm, they were surprised (to say the least) at the goings-on (and the comings-off). Then, as their sister got up to perform, they were completely stunned. This was not the sweet little innocent they had assumed she still was; they knew Ginny was an accomplished prankster, but this was a new facet of her character which they had never expected (and held great potential for pranks or even blackmail, or so they thought until they got to the end of the recording).

At the end of the recording came the biggest shock. There in the view stood their girlfriends, stark naked and touching themselves in intimate locations, looking smugly into the camera. Katie started "Okay, George and Fred, we decided to let you record our evening, because we know you like a good 'show', and you deserve to have some fun too". At this point Katie and Angelina began kissing each other and caressing each other's breasts. After about thirty seconds of this activity, they stopped, and Angelina continued, laughing as she spoke, "We don't know what you boys in the DA are going to do to get to know each other, but somehow we don't think it will be like this. If it is, Katie and I both want copies of that recording!"

Katie continued, turning a bit serious. "If copies of this recording, or word of our party and what happened there, get leaked to anyone, anyone, unless it comes from one of the girls telling her boyfriend herself, copies of this will be presented to your mother with our compliments. Don't try to find the copies – we have made several, and they are well hidden, disillusioned and otherwise secure. This is not a threat, it is a promise. Now, replay the recording and enjoy yourselves!" The recording closed with Angelina and Katie (still naked) hugging each other for support so they didn't fall down laughing.

Over the next few months, a new fashion became popular among the Hogwarts female population. Dresses (and in some cases underwear) of what appeared to be a thick plush velvet became common. Girls could be found stoking each other's backs, with the 'occupant' leaning into the stroking, often with an enraptured smile on her face. The school's boys, and the girls in Slytherin house who had been not let in to the secret, did not realize that the key to the dress (which Hermione, having grown up with muggle cartoons on Saturday mornings, referred to as a 'fur-bearing garment') was the charm which connected the pile of the fabric to the nerve cells in the girls' skin, making it a 'wearable fur' that even the animal rights people couldn't complain about. Luna, of course, had to be different and had a long one with longer white fur, which she referred to as her 'Persian' gown.

Hermione and the Ravenclaw girls started meeting with Professor McGonagall, to see about developing a transfiguration charm which would give them (temporarily) the false vocal chords which allow cats (and hopefully the girls) to purr. As the professor's animagus form was a cat, she had some special insight into the transformation, and was happy to assist (although she insisted that, as payment for her services, she be given a similar gown in a tabby pattern).

After the Christmas break, Arthur Weasley brought a recording to Molly's attention. He had found it, where it had been supposedly well hidden, after the twins had returned to Hogwarts for the winter term. They watched it together, somewhat amazed but also somewhat excited (they occasionally found visual stimulation an enjoyable pastime). Molly smiled as she remembered Ginny's experimental dance years before. They were surprised by their daughter's comments, her instigation of the 'Dark Parts' chant, and her performance, and then were delighted by Angelina and Katie's epilogue, hugging each other in their laughter.

Molly turned to Arthur and said "I think our little girl is going to have one happy husband." Arthur smiled and said, "She's a feisty one, our Ginny. I think she might need at least two husbands to handle her." The two realized the implications of what Arthur had said, and both burst out laughing, as they hugged each other.

Finis


End file.
